


Ho`oilo

by JoJo



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Episode: s05e07 Ina Paha (If Perhaps), F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pneumonia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-01 09:12:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8618431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: It’s been a tough year for Five-O's premier unmarried married couple.  Danny lost his brother in traumatic circumstances and Steve went one too many brutal rounds with Wo Fat.  Chin figures it’s time the two of them found peace in a proper commitment to each other. Trouble is, the whole team’s busy having its ass kicked, Danny seems hopelessly conflicted, and Steve is showing every sign he’s about to come undone.





	1. Sick

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the 100th episode, 5.07 "If Perhaps" - hand-wavy on canon. Past Danny/Rachel, Steve/Catherine, Danny/Amber, Steve/Chin.
> 
> Ho`oilo = Winter
> 
> With big thanks to farad for her patience and help. All mistakes belong to me (LOL and ETA: like the one where I only just noticed - a month after posting - that I called him Gabriel Wainwright instead of Waincroft. All corrected now!)

_“I am sick,”_ Kono told him.

Her sunshiny voice sounded feeble. Solidly congested, too. 

_“I am very, very sick, and I am not coming in. No way, not a chance, and I’m not even joking.”_

Given his cousin was the most disgustingly healthy of beings, Chin figured she must be bad. And certainly not even joking. 

He was already parked up under his favorite tree outside the Iolani and as he got out he moved his phone to the other ear, slammed the car door harder than necessary.

“Get to bed, drink your fluids, sweat it out, feel better,” he told her. Then he took the bad news up into HQ with him.

It was a fact that travelers – _haole_ and local alike – brought unwelcome bugs to the islands all year long. There was no escaping it. True too that there was always the customary spike over the rainy months. But, man, this year more than any other Chin remembered, the spike had been extreme, even prompting Governor Denning to consider calling a state of emergency. 

Kono, it seemed, was victim of a glitch Max Bergman had warned them about weeks ago – in a very long sentence while standing over a cadaver. 

“Unfortunately," he'd said, "We are seeing that although the state-wide annual take-up of the vaccine against the virus commonly called seasonal influenza has been steady, some meta-analysis suggests that due to factors including virus prevalence, levels of protection might prove ‘patchy’ – in actual fact, the accompanying mortality rate may turn out to be the highest for nearly seventy years.”

And that wasn't even Max on one of his more pessimistic jags.

Not that Kono was the first of them to succumb to ‘patchy’. Danny had been down for the count since Christmas. He was still down to be honest. And while it was no surprise that someone so recently bereaved would be vulnerable, Chin hadn't expected that a Danny off his game would be every bit as squirrely and hard to corral as a McGarrett. Or that he'd tough it out in much the same way, batting away concern, convinced the force of something – his own personality probably – could beat whatever ailed him. 

“Really? You, here? In the office?” McGarrett had been snappy when his partner had struggled in – as if he wouldn’t be ten times as bad in the same situation.

“Me here,” Danny had confirmed. “I’m past the contagious period so no need to get your bulletproof panties in a bunch.”

Chin wasn’t sure, thought maybe ‘the contagious period’ was something made up by squirrely people to justify coming to work when feeling like crap. Or perhaps it was simply that there was too much to think about alone at home. Chin could certainly relate to that. 

At any rate Danny had driven them insane for a few days with his insistence on being hyperactive in the morning, painfully hacking up a lung most afternoons, and then spectacularly crashing out with a fever sometime around dusk. Right now he was at home – where McGarrett, losing what little patience he owned, had eventually dragged him. Poor guy was even now fighting lassitude, his ex-wife's home remedies, and a deep, clinging cough. It seemed unfair given they'd all submitted to frontline priority jabs as early as October.

But still, between them they called him several times a day seeing as recent trauma and current 'flu didn't seem like a great combination.

“Nooooo, not another one,” Grover said, when Chin gave them the latest bulletin on Kono. He passed a hand over his pate. Renee and Will had been sick, too, and it hadn’t been pretty. Which was why he eyeballed Chin and cocked a head at McGarrett who wasn’t looking at him. Chin raised his brows delicately in response.

“She need anything?” Steve was oblivious, eyes on the smart table. “I can go home that way.”

The response was predictable. Steve might have backed off from trying to visit Danny once Rachel decided to bustle in, but for all his reserve in some areas, his commitment as their boss was entirely hands-on.

“Kono’s good,” Chin said quickly. Just that beat too quickly, so McGarrett’s eyes snapped up to him.

“What?” He was prickly. “You think it’s not appropriate for a sick employee’s boss to visit?”

Chin wasn't too confident on the question of whether Kono was still a heaving mass of contagion, but he and the rest of the team shared an unspoken pact about the danger of McGarrett getting himself exposed so soon off the back of the Makaloa basement. The only option seemed to be to head him off at the pass. Somehow.

He went for breezy.

“No, it's just that I know what Kono likes to eat and drink when she’s sick. And Adam’s on the case.”

“Oh, OK. Good.” Steve shrugged, evidently not in combative mood. He went back to looking at the table. That, right there, was the kind of red flag they were coming to dread but right now Chin was just grateful he didn’t notice the exchange of looks. And then they were saved by the pinging of his phone.

“Round one,” he murmured when McGarrett moved away to take the call. 

“Danny will go ballistic anyhow,” Grover murmured back, gloomy.

That was all too true. Especially when he heard the casualty in question was Kono, who a few days ago had literally been cheek by jowl with the boss in a surveillance position. For hours. Like, long enough and close enough to make folks talk.

Not that Steve would appreciate the significance. He really, really wouldn’t get it because according to all available sources he apparently just didn’t ‘get it’ – the ‘flu, that was. Allegedly he’d never fallen victim to anything as unromantic as a seasonal virus in his life. Well, not that Mary McGarrett – their entertaining but highly unreliable narrator on All Things Steve – could actually remember. He insisted it had been the same while he’d been serving, swore blind he hadn’t come down with anything even when half the fleet were dropping like flies around him. 

“Must’ve been all those vaccines in my butt,” he’d said, light and a touch smug. “Toughened my hide.”

The ‘hide’ remark had made Danny huff. But from his own memory Chin could have believed what Steve claimed about his immunity, and even run with it, if it hadn’t been for the extra and much more significant thing he didn’t care to acknowledge.

“That man,” Grover had said of him on more than one occasion, “is lousy with denial. Lousy, I tell you.” 

Danny, because he probably wasn't sure what else to do, always reacted to Lou's exasperation as if Steve's behavior was simply another irritation in a long line of irritations, rather than a potentially serious head-fuck which would might one day result in a need for urgent professional help.

Because, yeah. There had been Wo Fat.

The man who’d gone from unknown flunky to brutal nemesis in under a year. Whose murder of Jenna Kaye – always and forever one of their own, despite everything – had grievously wounded them all.

Because of Wo Fat there had been cold and restraints and electrical burns, the thought of which still kept Chin awake nights. There had been hallucinatory drugs which had messed with Steve so badly Danny had been almost literally incandescent with rage witnessing the fallout. 

Oh, and waterboarding. 

There had actually been that, too, according to the military medical people. Even knowing Wo Fat’s signature cruelty it had been hard to imagine, harder to accept. Which Steve himself apparently didn’t, of course, at least not openly or by name, even when it came back to bite him. 

“These things happen,” was his response, mightily irritated at being asked. “Pretty crappy but nothing I wasn’t trained for.”

“Pretty crappy,” Danny had repeated, the two words shaded in fury.

True to form, Steve had recovered with his usual impressive bounce-back from the injuries and brew of narcotics. But then he'd succumbed, almost un-noticed, to pneumonia.

“Nuh uh uh. Walking pneumonia,” as he’d clarified. Which was actually true, and beyond belief in that irritating McGarrett way, because sure enough he _had_ been walking and actually seemed a lot better off than those who then went down with the ‘flu. He was over it pretty quick, too.

His lungs, however, were temporarily ‘compromised’, to nobody’s surprise but Steve’s own. Too much filthy water, blood, and downright crap had been aspirated before he’d even gotten around to the final death match with Wo Fat.

“The Commander’s lungs will recover,” Max reassured them when they took the chance to ask, in Steve’s absence. “But of course he should stay clear of respiratory infection while his immune system catches up. Another bout before then could prove much more serious.”

“Well that’s terrific,” Danny had kvetched. “Now we have to stop him breathing as well?”

The potential hazard of the ‘flu outbreak seemed obvious, but nobody quite dared to say so. Not in so many words. They didn't even need to say it to each other – it was in the interests of everyone’s sanity that nothing else else went unnoticed if they could help it, and that all possible risks should be shut down. It was just how Five-O worked, and there were so many ways in which Wo Fat and the damage he'd done was personal.

“Had the shot, covered,” was Steve's précis when he got wind of their nannying routine. They'd all noticed how he telescoped sentences down to nothing these days.

“Remember patchy,” Chin tried, but got an aggrieved ‘not you, too?’ look instead of a response.

And then, after Colombia, everything nearly fell apart.

For a start Chin couldn't get Gabriel Waincroft out of his mind. The sickly feeling of culpability and the fact that he’d never not be related to him. Then Steve developed a new kind of thousand-yard stare around the anniversary of his dad's killing. It didn't really surprise anyone that this year it hit him harder than ever. Danny, stunned and grieving his little brother, threw himself into work like a blind man. Hallowe’en came and went bringing Wo Fat in on the backwash. Not surprisingly Thanksgiving passed without a McGarrett turkey.

The hits kept coming.

As Christmas loomed Kono and Chin lost one of their many aunties to the virus, and then the team was rocked all over again when a favorite protégé of Duke Lukela’s got sick, went into hospital, and just didn’t come out again. There turned out to have been an underlying problem with his health, but he’d only been twenty-five and his funeral had been an emotional kick in the guts. One lunch-time at Kamekona's Max had mused – ramblingly – that there was a strong, epidemiological case for those who were known to be ‘compromised’ actually leaving the islands altogether.

“The long words I can lose but your idea is sound,” Danny had declared, chasing shrimp listlessly around his plate. It had been a day or so before he’d first succumbed himself. He’d jabbed his fork in Steve’s general direction, meaningful.

The response had been on the edges of cocky. “That’s fine, Danno, I understand, you think you don’t want to be with me.”

Chin wasn’t sure if he’d imagined a sliver of worry behind Steve's snark.

“I’m serious. You’d be better off sleeping rough in Newark.” Danny had wiped his hands on a napkin, pushed his plate aside. Then he’d actually poked Steve in his good shoulder with a finger, unable to leave him alone, which Chin thought would have been asking for trouble except that Steve often took from Danny what he’d take from no other person on earth. Especially right now. “I’m telling you, as thick as the smog gets over there, you’d be better off in the cold and snow.”

“Funny,” was all Steve had said.

The thing was, with half of HPD and who knew how many other frontline staff out, O’ahu was in need. And Five-0 didn’t walk away when O’ahu was in need. They were there to do a job, and they shared the same mantras: keep focused, keep each other in the loop and – most crucially – keep everyone safe.

Chin, taking responsibility for information sharing and status checks, called Danny later when he had a chance. He was downtown the evening of the day Kono called in sick, still handling the aftermath of a combined armed robbery and multiple RTA. Anyone with any kind of badge was pitching in when normally it was the duty cops left shoveling this kind of shit show. Grover was heading back to base with two violent perps and Steve had been called to a snap meeting with the Police Commissioner about emergency protocols. In his absence Chin had been the one left leading the pursuit of one of their suspects across the rooftops. It felt as if it was going to be a long night.

“Hey, how you doing?” Chin asked Danny when the call was finally picked up. He stood tense with one hand on the roof of his car, sweaty, and bathed in flashing lights. “Have everything you need?”

_“Yeah, so I’m going out of my tiny.”_

Chin smothered a smirk, his tension receding a little. Danny had the odd knack of doing that for him. “And feeling any better?”

 _“Oh sure. I mean, aside from the fact that every time I move from the fridge to the couch it’s like a hike over the Gobi Desert.”_

Danny’s voice was still thick with phlegm, comfortingly pungent.

“Brutal,” Chin said. 

_“So how’s it with you? Am I missing anything?”_

Chin made a conscious effort not to offload, but he wasn’t sure how successful he was.

“Kono’s sick, so we’re a little stretched. Feels like we’re putting out fires twenty four seven. Governor wants to avoid the whole troops on the streets scenario, you know? But Steve’s in with the Commissioner now and he reckons there’ll be some kind of crisis plan issued by tomorrow. Which will mean more fires.”

 _“Kono is sick.”_ Danny ignored everything else he’d been told and repeated this revelation, his echo ominous. 

“Yeah, the usual. Fever, congestion, fatigue.”

 _“Well that’s shitty,”_ Danny said. _“I thought Kono never got sick.”_

“She doesn’t.”

_“Huh. So you? Lou? Max? Jer?”_

“Doing great.” Chin raised his hand in acknowledgement of Duke who was signaling at him that he needed five minutes. “And at least your girl got it over with during the holidays, right?”

_“Yeah, think she's good for another year at least.”_

There was a pause. A name not mentioned.

“Don’t sweat it,” Chin said, wry. “We’re keeping an eye on him for you.”

Danny coughed. _“Am I that obvious?”_

“You both are, all the time.”

_“Oh-ho. Meaning?”_

Chin inwardly sighed over the everlasting juggling act played out between pretense and outright admission. He rubbed at his forehead with the back of his wrist.

Danny and Steve had been, as Kono preferred to term it, "sleeping" together – at least on and off – since... oh, around the time Catherine dumped Steve for Afghanistan? After Danny had hauled McGarrett’s sorry backside home anyhow. Seemed the wreckage had hardly been peeled from the empty belly of a Hercules military transport before the long-running flirtation had kicked up a considerable gear. What it had kicked up to hadn’t been exactly clear. Still wasn’t. Chin, Kono, and Max, had recognized the change at the time, but the penny still hadn't quite dropped for Lou Grover.

Danny and Steve knew Chin and Kono knew – probably – but mostly pretended they didn’t. That worried Chin. The hiding of important truths was something he’d been badly burned by, not to mention being the major wrecking ball of McGarrett’s entire life. 

And at times things were clearly more intense between Danny and Steve, while at other times they weren’t. Girlfriends and ex-wives wove in and out of their disarray. Catherine Rollins had walked away, Amber Vitali hadn’t yet persuaded Danny to settle, and Ellie Clayton had too many painful links to the past to be anything but a friend. Rachel, on the other hand, had been a rock of solidarity for Danny since he’d lost his brother – all the more since Steve had mentally checked out around the same time

So, yeah, something of a holy fuck-up all the way around. But anyhow, the sleeping together. Or the mutual jerking each other off. Or whatever the hell it was they got up to.

Chin had long known that McGarrett, on the very rare occasions he put out anywhere, was interested in men as well as women. They’d recognized that in each other way back in High School after all. And, after seeing how intensely they sparked off one another he’d wondered if Danny Williams, with his marriage on the rocks and his openly cheerful appreciation of McGarrett shirtless and in wet swimtrunks, was cut from the same cloth. He changed his mind almost daily, though, as to whether two such opposites hooking up was a good thing. Steve was a hermetically-sealed emotional clam, all about the control, while Danny, God love him, was a permanent display of reaction and response, heart pinned noisily to his chest. How in the hell would that work?

“Oh come on, baby, come on!” Malia had actually said to Chin once, amazed he was being so obtuse. “That’s got nothing to do with it. They’re crazy in love, those two. Practically written in the stars. You have to see that!”

They were still bright and vital these flashes of Malia, and they crushed Chin anew every time. Every single memory of her was a searing reminder that taking a chance on being crazy in love had to be worth it – if anything at all was. Malia would have been one of the first to suggest there should be more to Steve and Danny than whatever it was they currently had. Problem was, Chin remained to be convinced they’d ever get beyond jumping each other’s bones every couple of weeks. 

He was pretty sure they did it as a form of stress relief, but that didn’t seem very healthy as a long-term life choice. Sure, the sexual tension radiating around the place had added a good deal of entertaining spice to the working day at times, not to mention some hilarious conversations between him and Kono. But as for any kind of solid commitment, or actual facing up to how very big of a deal it could be... well, apparently not this side of Danny bonding with someone who wasn’t quite as high maintenance, or of McGarrett finally going down in flames.

It pissed Chin off sometimes. For a number of reasons, one of which wasn't very edifying. 

But mostly, it was that the rest of the team could really do with them getting their shit together and they themselves could do with it even more. Not even because it would be kinda nice and they both deserved it, more because it might just end up preventing the going down in flames thing. 

Chin sighed to himself again. Maybe in the new year? Finding a way to force the issue for everyone’s benefit would be a great resolution to make.

But in the meantime, the fires still needed putting out.

“Steve’s fine, Danny,” he soothed.

_“Sure he is.”_

“He just wants to know you’re doing better.”

Not that McGarrett would say so in a thousand years, Chin thought to himself, even though it was like a giant flashing sign on his forehead. He had history with Steve, their love and loyalty was watertight. But that didn’t make him easy.

_“He’s a dope.”_

Chin felt another smile nudge his lips at that. “Right.”

_“Listen, I appreciate the call, buddy. You all stay well, you hear? And give Kono my love.”_

“Will do.”

_“And if that idiot so much as sneezes...”_

“Yeah, yeah, we tackle him to the floor, hog-tie him, then drag his ass home to bed.”

_“How come you’re party to all my best fantasies?”_

There was an answer to that, rooted in the long distant past, but Chin wasn’t going to give it.

“TMI, Williams. Just, really.”

There was a hacking laugh as the call was ended.

Chin pocketed the phone, began to weave a way through the stopped cars towards Duke and his officers. He hadn’t quite reached them before his phone vibrated again.

“Hey,” he said, taking the new call. “I know I’m not going to like what you’re about to tell me. How’d it go?”

 _“So,”_ Steve said. He was short, impersonal, and typically to the point. _“Forget about any plans you had for a life.”_


	2. Hau'oli Makahiki Hou

Then came New Year’s, and Lou Grover was not impressed.

“Neh, nothing arranged,” Steve said when he was asked.

Grover didn’t like the lack of interest on display. It didn’t seem to be coming from an uncaring place, more an empty one, which gave him a vague feeling of indigestion. He'd tried tackling this before and McGarrett had been receptive to unburdening at first, but the damned Makaloa basement had exploded all over that little piece of progress.

“Me either.” Chin shrugged, but Lou reckoned it was weariness more than anything else

Turned out Kamekona and Flippa were about the only ones prepared to contemplate fireworks on the beach. Adam was out of town, Kono was still too sick to give a shit, and as she was chief party animal that more or less killed the spirit. Max did mention he was having a few friends round to the MEO, but for some reason that didn’t sound very appealing to anyone except Jerry. 

“So really?” Lou asked. “You pooping the party bigtime?”

“Looks like it.” McGarrett was unrepentant, already leaving the conversation behind.

“Sorry, Lou.” Chin clapped him on the back. “But you guys, you go for it.”

“Well,” Grover said. 

In the end he decided his family, having canceled their planned trip to Chicago because they couldn’t face the breeding ground of infection that was the airport, were going to spend a quiet night in. 

“Movie, popcorn, minimum booze, maximum early bedtime,” as he explained during a gossipy call to Danny.

_“Are you serious?”_

“Are you kidding am I serious?" Once he'd gotten with the downbeat program it had begun to appeal more and more. "I’m beat, and in any case the Governor’s decided he wouldn’t put it past the scumbags to choose tonight for all the best shit to go down.”

_“So, what? You’ll be watching a movie in your PJs while on stand-by for a call-up?”_

“Jeez, I hope not. Not unless the pooch gets royally screwed. Chin and Steve drew the short straws and there’s going to be no partying, that’s for damn sure. Besides, McGarrett's current M.O is to be about as cheerful as a wet weekend.”

Even as he said it, Grover was shaking his head, hoping the moodiness wasn't what he suspected.

Danny seemed to consider his words for a second. Then he said, _“So contrary to popular tradition, nobody from the Governor’s elite task force is going to get out of their head on tequila and then kiss someone they probably shouldn’t – with tongues and inappropriate touching – the moment the ball drops?”_

“Danny,” Grover growled at him, not having been here this time last December 31st, “Are you delirious? You’re babbling.”

A croaky sigh. _“Reminiscing. It’s allowed.”_

Grover harrumphed. “You on your own tonight?”

_“No, and even if I was you have a movie night to go to.”_

“Uh huh, there’s this other thing I have as well, see. Call it cop’s instinct if you will. Which tells me you’re lying. Rachel’s taken the kids to London hasn’t she?”

Danny made a discontented noise. _“Something like that. They are even now sleeping off something called a fancy-dress party in the wilds of Glou-cester-shire.”_

“You whaddywhere?”

_“It’s near someplace famous. Shit, I can’t remember now. Anyhow I’m looking on it as two more days’ peace before my ex mother-in-law gets here.”_

“Oh,” Grover said. And then, “Ow.”

_“Yeah, she’s bringing Grace back for the start of school, Stan's still God knows where, and Rachel’s taking Charlie to visit her sister in Paris. It’ll be fine, I won’t need to see her too much.”_

“Great time to be visiting.”

Danny gave a hollow laugh. _“Believe me, Lou, Rachel's mother is one of the toughest broads on the planet. I have the scars to prove it.”_

“I hear you, brother.” 

There was a brief pause while Danny blew his nose and cleared his throat. Then he said, _“How’s our girl doing anyhow?”_

“Last bulletin may have mentioned she’s a little crabby. Can’t get out of bed.”

_“That's bad.”_

“Yeah, well. We all visited, Steve made sure she’s doing as she’s told. Kono’s another tough broad.”

_“Isn’t she though.”_

Grover could almost hear the cogs turning in Danny’s evening-fever brain. 

“I know what you’re thinking, man.”

_“You let Steve visit Kono? Really?” ___

“Listen, we kept him away long as we could, but you know he sees it as his duty. Yeah, and if we try and stop him he just does that whole benevolent dictator thing.” 

_“Well the pain in my ass calls all the damn time, checking up – nag, nag, nag – but honestly? I’m impressed by how successfully you’ve kept him away from me.”_

Danny didn’t sound impressed. He sounded a little sad.

"You’re easy, brother.” Grover was trenchant. “For one he knows Rachel’s been there. And for two, like all of us, he’s scared shitless of you. And yeah, if it’s any consolation, he may not be on your doorstep every five seconds, but he’s doing a good job fretting.”

 _“Scared shitless? Fretting?”_

There was the bubble of a delighted laugh in Danny’s voice that Grover was pleased to hear. 

“You heard me. Kono’s loving all the care visits but you, you’re a punchy motherfucker when you’re sick. Anyway, man’s decided since he’s not going to get this damn thing himself he’ll be Commander Ironman, patroling the troops and keeping up morale.”

_“Gotta love him,”_ Danny said, oddly heartfelt.

Not for the first time Grover felt a question forming in his head that he never took any further. “Yeah,” he said. “Or the other thing.”

_“That too, of course.”_

Grover puffed out a laugh at that. “Well, listen. We’re all OK for now, you hear? You just take it easy, carry on getting better. And as Chin told me to tell you – and I’ve been practising – Hau'oli Makahiki Hou.”

_“That’s easy for you to say. Same to you and yours, buddy. See you on the other side.”_

Grover grinned, pocketed his phone and wandered into the kitchen. Samantha, defiantly dressed up to the nines even though she was grounded for some misdemeanor he couldn't even remember anymore, was rootling around in the cupboards.

“We have salty snacks, right?” she asked.

“Your mother went out earlier so I’m guessing yes.”

“I did,” Renee called, harassed, from the hallway, “But seeing as folk are stockpiling for the apocalypse out there it was slim pickings.”

Samantha turned from her rootling looking daggers. “This New Year’s sucks. I wish we were in Chicago.”

“Yeah, sorry about that, baby girl.”

His daughter frowned in impatience at the affectionate name and stomped out of the kitchen. Upstairs her bedroom door slammed with unpromising significance.

At that point it looked as if even movie night was in jeopardy.

Grover eventually hit the sack around one second past midnight. He slept fitfully to the sound of the Waikiki fireworks, Renee’s snuffly post-flu snoring, and his children exterminating bad guys on the Playstation. 

He hadn’t been called by Chin or McGarrett and he was grateful for that. The fact that parts of suburban Honalulu had been good and lairy in the early hours was lost to him until Jerry drunk-dialed his phone at six, told a long, implausible story that Grover didn’t follow, and then snapped back to reality long enough to inform him his colleagues had only just clocked off and gone home.


	3. Re-entry

It was ten days into January before they all made it back to the Iolani Palace. 

The start of the year had been grim on O’ahu, and Danny was badly missing winter in New Jersey - as usual. Genuine hoar frost on the trees, the wearing of mufflers, heavy wool coats. Comforts like open fires in Newark's Irish bars and schnitzel at Mordi’s in Jersey City. All the good stuff. And actually, even the weather that could chill you so deep you’d think you were dead already. Yeah, he missed that, too.

Here in the windy warmth, and following a good deal of to and fro between McGarrett and HPD’s Chief of Detectives, the Governor’s emergency protocols had been rolled out as a response to what seemed like an opportunistic crime wave. 

_“Oh well that’s nice,”_ Danny must have said half a dozen times while being kept up to date on the antics of the local felons. 

Police and military reserves were called up to plug gaps, and all law enforcement services were expected to cover for one another. There was talk of an evening curfew being imposed but Denning was talked down from that ledge by Steve and the Chief. And those two being in agreement was a significant newsflash.

More rain than usual for the islands’ season fell in short, vengeful bursts, the atmosphere heavy with ill-health. There were some landslips in outlying areas, then an electrical storm that took out essential power in parts of Honalulu for a while. It didn’t help. Clinics on the island closed due to lack of staff and social media went into full, viral panic mode. Just from watching TV Danny gleaned how spicy the nights had become in one or two areas because those looking for trouble thought there weren’t enough cops to face them down. 

As for Five-O, running intervention on everything from murder to looting, hours were long, sleep was disturbed, tempers became frayed.

“Man, you guys,” Kono said, looking unhappy to see it on the first Monday she and Danny made it in. “Have you even been to bed for the last two weeks?” She wasn’t quite glowing with her usual obnoxious good health either. 

There was hugging, a suspiciously lackluster pantomime from McGarrett about missing sick-notes, and maybe one too many jokes about mucous secretions. There was more hugging.

“Don’t tell me.” Danny’s brows were up in his temporarily mussed hair as he looked around the disorganization. “The cleaners too?” There were piles of paper strewn on various desks, a sticky patch on the corner of the tech table, some unopened boxes on the floor, and several mountains of empty mugs and takeaway cups littering most surfaces. 

“Priorities, man,” Steve told him, in the pissy voice he got when he was toe to toe with exhaustion. He gave Danny an exaggerated once over, wagging his head. “You even sure you’re strong enough to be complaining?”

They’d talked on the phone several times a day while Danny had been out – squabbling and shooting the shit more than anything, although it had been hard to get much out of McGarrett – but they hadn’t actually seen each other since... well, since last year. Danny felt a wild buzz at even having Steve in the same room as him.

He’d finally kicked the fever and cough, but he knew he looked pasty because his visiting ex mother-in-law had told him so, repeatedly. In the absence of what he considered decent waffles, Grover just reckoned he needed to eat a metric ton of malasadas, extra fried. 

“Don’t you shake your head at me,” Danny batted back to McGarrett, automatic, even though he actually wanted to hug the stuffing out of him again. “And enough with the look. Have you seen yourself lately?”

It was true the three survivors looked slightly the worse for wear. 

“Been working all the hours,” Grover pointed out, baggy-eyed.

“Hey.” Chin gestured round the smart table tiredly, grounding them as usual. “Sun’s out, we’re still standing.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, rubbing the back of his neck in the manner of someone at the end of a working day and not at the beginning. He glanced at Danny and tried to smile. Danny felt a stab of remorse but he wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe because Steve’s eyes looked too large in his face and he’d cut his top lip shaving, the klutz. Plus, those GQ cheekbones could have sliced cheese. 

Not that Danny should be surprised. Steve thrived on pressure, had single-mindedly spent much of his adult life hurtling towards it at breakneck speed. That he then walked a perilously thin line with the consequences was one of many anomalies Danny had learned if not to cherish, at least to accept.

But overall, if he could get over the fact that his office was a mess and there was no toilet paper in the bathroom, Danny decided he’d feel pretty good about the re-entry. What had been scritching around in the back (and sometimes front) of his brain since he’d been away had not come to pass. He and Kono may have submitted to the ricochet of nasty pathogens, but Jerry and Chin and Lou seemed to have escaped and the cast-iron McGarrett immune system remained further uncompromised.

Complacent son of a bitch was still half smiling at Danny as if he knew what he was thinking. 

Danny had missed him like a limb.

“So, work,” Steve said. “You want to know what’s been going down, it’s all up to date on the machines.”

“Oh please.” Danny was disbelieving. “You’ve been writing up reports too?”

“We are professionals,” Grover told him. “Doing our job, tippity tappity, while you lightweights were lounging around in bed.”

“Lounging,” Danny said, drawing the word out. He looked at Steve. “So really? The reports are all up?”

“Eh, more or less.”

The face Danny made in response was the one Kono called ‘The Robert De Niro is Impressed’.

Breaking up to get on with something largely unspecified, Steve moved behind him on the way to their respective offices. Danny had anticipated a touch. And sure enough, when he felt a hand on the small of his back, he tingled as if certain nerve endings had abruptly come online again. He’d been too sick to think much about that kind of tingling while he’d been away, but Steve never had to do much to remind him. The hand lingered a moment, then abruptly dropped away.

That one connection was more or less signature McGarrett – a layer of convincing confidence nailed down over a squishy mess of insecure. Enough to make Danny seriously goofy if he wasn't careful.

“You big marshmallow. You’re beside yourself to see me aren’t you?” Danny said kindly, turning so their hips bumped. “I can tell.”

“Give it an hour.”

“That long?”

“OK, half an hour.”

Danny basked in the familiar back and forth. He basked in the way Steve abruptly smirked at him, those ridiculously pretty Disney Princess eyes resting longer than necessary on his mouth as if half considering becoming re-acquainted with it there and then. Being heartsick and laid up had made Danny forget how much he wanted those smirks and eyes and everything that tended to go with them. Even the ever-present feeling of discontent.

“Time we got back to normal, McGarrett.” 

“Oh, normal,” Steve said. “Sure.”

Yeah. It would probably be the weekend before they had a chance to spend any time exploring that tricky concept. Occasional evenings on occasional weekends was their normal. If Danny could just slip the leash from his ex mother-in-law there’d be the usual squabbling over the TV remote, drinking way too much, and laughing their asses off. Then there’d be the usual unashamedly romantic kissing, followed by some much less romantic making out, up to but not including what Danny really wanted to do, with some bonus holding on tight straight after. Half-naked, sweaty, high on endorphins, a tangle of throw cushions and Steve's long legs. Most especially, there’d be the usual drawing back once daylight hit, or even before. The mutual dance around what lay beneath as if they absolutely agreed there was nowhere else for them to go.

Normal.

Which this week probably wasn't going to be either. And sure enough, halfway through it, Governor Denning came to see Steve.

The others peered at them talking in McGarrett’s office through the glass walls, all trying to pretend they weren’t.

“We in trouble?” Grover wondered.

“Depends what you’ve been up to while us real cops have been away,” Kono said.

Chin frowned at her. “Hey, you can’t lump me in with SWAT and the Navy,” he protested. “Give me a break, they’re all crazy those guys.”

“Steve’s doing that serious nodding thing,” Danny observed, anxious. 

“Maybe just him in trouble then.”

There didn’t seem to be any trouble, but after Denning had left, Steve called a team meeting. And that even included Jerry who came rambling in convinced, as usual, that he was about to get his badge.

It was Wednesday early evening and Danny was already a little pissed off because he hadn’t been able to meet Grace from school. Either he’d have to not see her today after all or else he’d have to spend time at the dinner-table with his ex mother-in-law. Which was kind of a zero-sum choice.

“We good, boss?” Kono asked as soon as they were assembled. She was worried, Danny could tell. This job, this life, this team – they were precious to her.

“Oh we’re good,” McGarrett said. He stood in his crossed arms position for a moment. “Governor gave me a status report, said the figures are looking better.” He didn't elaborate, just paused as if he'd lost his focus for a second, lifting one hand to worry the stubble on his chin.

Danny ached a little to see it. He was tempted to snap his fingers under Steve's nose but decided not to.

"And?" he prompted instead.

Steve blinked. “Chief Medical Officer thinks there may be a secondary spike coming, but Denning’s shelving the emergency protocols, for now. Said Five-O deserved a break while we had the chance, and this would be a good time to take it.”

“A break? Like in vacation break?” Grover’s voice betrayed that he actually thought such a thing to be a fantastical notion.

“Let’s just say he’s let it be known that extra leave is on offer, and actively encouraged.” Steve’s lips turned up then, and he uncrossed his arms. “There’s enough personnel in HPD for back-up now. Governor gave me discretion over how many of you can take those days. And my discretion says everyone can take the week, from tomorrow end of the day.”

“Holy shit,” Kono said, “I was not expecting that!”

Danny looked Steve up and down as if seeing him for the first time. “Scratch everything I’ve ever said previously because you, my friend, may in fact be the best certifiably insane Navy SEAL Commander task force boss that ever lived.” 

“Kind of hot, too,” Jerry added, amiable.

Chin coughed over a laugh. 

“Chicago here we come?” Grover sounded as if he still didn’t believe it.

Steve gave a broad, self-satisfied smile, spreading his bounty around the table.

“You got it, buddy. Long as paperwork’s up to date, I won’t be expecting to see any of you for seven whole days. And this is full team break, so no calling round, OK?”

Far from not being seen for seven whole days, the first thing Danny thought was that maybe he and Steve could barricade themselves into the McGarrett family house for the duration and do what they did best. That would be pretty relaxing. Then he thought of his ex mother-in-law, who couldn’t be expected to watch Grace on her own for that long. And then, more destructively, he thought of Rachel, and then Charlie, who wasn't his kid but really should be. 

Only the other night Rachel had mused, in one of her sweetly manipulative emails, how great it would be if Danny could come over to Paris for a few days now he felt better, because hadn't he always wanted to? Oh, and his cousin Anthony lived there, of course, and there was loads of room at her sister’s and Charlie was adorable but kind of a handful, and Paris was fabulous, and guess what? They could all fly home together because she really did hate flying alone with little kids. Actually she hadn’t said that last part, but Danny could read between the lines.

He stared at Steve. The big lummox was still annoyingly pleased with himself. At the same time he really did want the best for them all and Danny’s heart did strange, twisted things to see it.

“What about you?” he demanded, voice huskier than he was expecting. “Are you going to take a vacation?” He had a brief vision of the two of them in Paris, drinking some idiotic French drink at some idiotically beautiful sidewalk cafe. Even though he knew this wasn’t at all what Rachel had meant. She, of course, was still worried about where his head was at after Mattie.

“Um,” Steve said in genuine puzzlement, as if he hadn’t actually thought of that. Or as if the idea totally freaked him out. “Sure.” 

“C’mon, boss,” Kono immediately came back, spirited. “We’re not if you’re not.”

Chin raised a quizzical brow at him. “Yeah, if you’re standing down the team, it’s only right. I know you don’t do R&R if you can help it, but we look to you to give the example.”

“Leading from the front, babe,” Danny put in.

Steve looked round at them, cornered. “Well yeah, sure. Could use the sleep I guess.” He scratched his ear as he thought further, then crossed his arms again, tattoos peeking from his t-shirt. “How about we have an early wrap-up at Side Street tomorrow and then go do our thing?”

“I love my job,” Kono said, her face split in a smile of glee. “You know what the waves are like on the North Shore this week, right?”

“What about you, Danny? Will you head to Jersey, or stick around here?” Chin’s question seemed innocent enough.

Danny already had kind of a pit in his stomach, but he dragged his eyes up and met Steve’s speculative steel-gray gaze, trying to explain himself before he even spoke. There was no way he was going back to Jersey, much as he missed all the hoar frost and schnitzel and shit. Not right now. Not unless he had to. Jersey was the newly dug grave. It was his mom and pop and sisters wanting him to explain things about Mattie that he couldn’t stand to remember.

And he and Steve couldn't really vacation together anyway, could they, because, well, it probably wasn't like that, this stupid thing they had going on.

“Paris,” he said at last, training his mind firmly on to Charlie who didn't belong to him, and away from the swirls of ink on Steve’s biceps, which kind of almost did. “I think I’m going to go to Paris.”


	4. Run That Body Down

Thursday was mad-house crazy. There was still too much to do, too little time to do it in, and in Steve’s opinion not enough concentration was being given to the execution. 

He secretly enjoyed seeing them all keyed up, though. Like kids before recess. 

The two mainlanders seemed stoked to be getting “off this rock” as Danny would have it. Kono was peppy as a soda because Adam had declared the waves on the North Shore wouldn’t cut it and he was taking her to Maui instead, and let's face it everyone could get a kick out of Jerry going metal-detecting with his sister on the big island. 

Chin worried Steve a little more, as he often did. When gently prodded into revealing his plans he admitted he was ready for a full five-day retreat in the Makaleha mountains on Kauai. For some reading, thinking, and… well, retreating.

“That’s good, buddy, I’m pleased,” Steve said, knowing of old what Chin Ho Kelly needed for sanity, the absolute necessity for him to periodically draw down the shutters. He figured it might be better to keep the plan quiet, though, since Kono would only worry about her cousin brooding on his own up there, and Danny was unlikely to get his head around the idea of ‘full retreat’ at all. 

“I’d say you should come with,” Chin said, after a beat of hesitation. “Only... it really is isolated where I’m planning to go. And peaceful. Generally no need for close combat skills.”

“Right,” Steve said, appreciating the joke and yet unhappy with what it said about him. 

“Seriously, what are you going to do?”

Steve stretched out some kinks. “Well,” he said, “there’s my dad's car. And there's always stuff I need to see to at the house.”

“Home maintenance, huh?”

“Yeah, you know I like doing that.”

Chin chuckled. “Taking sledgehammers to walls and then rebuilding them? Yeah, I remember how your home maintenance goes.”

“It’s therapeutic.”

“Well, good,” Chin said, a seriousness entering his voice that Steve couldn’t quite interpret. “That’s really good.” And then he smiled again. “And how do you think Danny will take to Paris?”

“Ha, shouldn’t the question be more how Paris will take to Danny?”

They both looked out of the office at where Kono and Danny were cackling over something on the smart table that almost certainly wasn’t work related. Steve felt a strange wave of dizziness. He couldn’t believe Danny would actually be going so far away. And for what he didn't even understand.

"And are you OK with it?" Chin asked, eyes on his face.

To Steve that seemed to be a 'we know and you know we know' question.

"I'm sure he has his reasons."

"Reasons," Chin said. "Right. You haven't asked him what they are?"

Steve wasn't sure whether he should be trying to explain the fug in his brain to Chin. Hell, he couldn't even explain it to himself.

"Listen, you want to go get lost in the mountains, Danny wants to fly twelve thousand miles across the world." He shrugged. "It's all about taking a break, getting away. Not my place to tell you what to do and where to go."

"Hmm," Chin said, sounding unconvinced. "OK."

And maybe it was because of Chin's prodding, or maybe it was more because of the knot in his stomach, Steve decided to risk it.

Returning from the transfer of a days old John Doe found in the lot of the Ala Moana center to HPD, he glanced sideways from behind the wheel of the Camaro and said, “Paris, huh?”

Just that.

“Yeah, so it was always a thing,” Danny answered at once, as if he’d been expecting the question. He cracked his knuckles, a sure sign he was uptight. “My cousin Anthony's been there a few years, really misses home. He was always close to Mattie, and as he didn't get to come to the funeral I figure he really needs a family visit, you know? Plus I have a chance to spend some quality time with a cute kid in a beautiful city while Stan is elsewhere. 

“And with Rachel?”

“Oh, I see.”

“You see? What do you see?”

“You think I’m going all the way over there to get romantic with my ex-wife.”

“Well are you?”

“No! Jeez, Steven! That’s done, that’s over.”

Steve took a breath. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah I know. It’s just... Paris.”

Danny calmed down, although he did crack his knuckles again. “The city of lovers.”

Steve looked over, looked back at the road. “Well,” he said. “Maybe one day.” He wasn’t even sure where that had come from.

“One day what?” Danny laughed. “You and me?”

“Why not?” Steve felt instantly defensive, made sure his face suggested it was a joke. If that was what Danny wanted.

“Fine, you're on. I’ll scope it out, let you know.” Danny could have been continuing the joke, or not.

“Make sure you go to the Catacombs,” Steve said after a minute of silence during which his head began to ache. “They’re very cool.”

“The Catacombs, he says, which would be a dark, claustrophobic underground place full of dead people. That's very nice, Steven. And you know they're cool because? You’ve been there but never told me?”

“Well, maybe.” 

“Classified?”

Steve smirked then, knew he was on safer ground. “You’ll love it,” he said.

The whole Paris with Rachel thing hurt though. Like a sharp catch under his ribs. Not to mention what being with his very adorable not-kid was going to do to Danny. Who needed to be reminded of what he didn't have like he needed a hole in the head.

And that made him think about Danny’s very adorable actual kid.

“What about Gracie?” he asked, making a sneaky appeal to Danny's dislike of being away from her. “She OK with this?"

"Pretty much, actually."

Well, damn.

"So, she’ll be with Rachel’s mom?"

"No, she'll be home alone, what do you think?"

"I mean, of course you’ve made plans, but I would have been more than happy. You know I would, right?”

Danny looked over. Steve could feel the warmth of his gaze on the side of his face, and it made him feel worse than ever.

“Believe me, Steven, if there was any way I could leave Grace with you instead of my ex mother-in-law, I would do it, the regime of early morning swims and watching you up to your elbows in engine-oil notwithstanding.”

“Really?”

“Really. The ex mother-in-law visit was beyond my control. It was set months ago, but it suits both of us that I’ll miss some of it. Grace will be fine – it’s only a few days, they get along fine, and she’ll be at school.”

“You could have taken her out of school, taken her to Paris.”

“Have I not told you about the cheerleader trials?”

Steve felt a stab of anxiety. Had Danny told him? Why would he feel he needed to remember that kind of stuff?

“Yeah, OK.” His mind was a blank. About that, and about quite a number of other things if he was honest. But anyhow, Paris was a done deal. He forced himself to concentrate on the road instead.

Danny's eyes rested on him for a long moment. 

"Awesome," he said eventually. "So there's that. And we're all fine, we're all good."

No, Steve thought, heart still skittering. Not all good, not at all good.

Although, by the time they arrived back at the Palace he’d given himself an internal talking-to. A severe one. He had no business selfishly questioning Danny’s plans for Paris, because Danny should just be with Rachel right now. Of course he should. Rachel who’d known Mattie. Who knew Danny well enough to reach out and give him the right kind of comfort. Which Steve, as much as he was accustomed to standing guard over his team’s happiness, apparently couldn’t at the moment. Lately it was as if everything except automatic pilot had deserted him. Their first case after the funeral, for example, he’d been just that fatal touch less aware than usual. If it hadn’t been for Danny’s warning, the guy Helms would have taken his head off on that damn boat. And maybe it would have served him right.

Danny was the first to leave that day. He was out of the building by mid-afternoon, headed to the airport. Which felt like the worst start to a vacation he didn't even want that Steve had ever had.

There were actually some things unfinished when the five o’clock deadline rolled around. It was almost physically painful to him, but today Steve didn’t push for them. He could get a serious thrill from loose ends being surgically tied, from signing things off only when all the i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed. Not for nothing had his sister always called him anal and then laughed knowingly. But right now his people were straining at the leash. They needed their beers, their wings, their kalua pork.

They needed out of here.

“Just go,” he said, poking his head out of his office. “I’ll see you there.”

Chin frowned at him. “Don’t be long.”

Steve wasn’t long. He arrived at Side Street half an hour after the others. He managed one, drawn-out beer and not much food. And then he felt weary. Down into his marrow weary. Psychosomatic, he decided, the body reacting because he knew was about to have time off. The sensation of sudden onset fatigue drop-kicked him from out of nowhere even so.

Somehow he was the last to leave. 

He saw Lou off, then did his best to be cheerful and welcoming when Adam dropped by to pick up Kono. Chin bought him another Longboard, which he’d badly wanted to refuse but somehow couldn’t, and then he paid the check for everyone—which Danny really should have seen with his own eyes—and finally told Chin to beat it.

“See you in a week, man. Enjoy the mountains.”

Chin’s hand on his back as they embraced was strangely painful.

And then the drive home seemed long, tiredness trickling over him like mist. 

As well as weary, he felt restless. Steve was familiar with the sensation. It unsettled him knowing the team was dispersing and that he had a whole week to get through. Like coming home wrecked, after an op, knowing it would take days to get used to having no purpose.

When he arrived at the front door, his dad’s house was as quiet and empty as ever.

He supposed that was a relief. But man he had a headache.

There was an annoying little jump in his muscles, too. Of impending exhaustion, he supposed. 

Or something else.

Even though it was genuinely something unfamiliar from his adult life, Steve guessed it was just possible he might be getting sick. Mental and physical exhaustion he knew all too well. But this... this was different. It was annoying and he resented it. His legs were heavy for no reason, his skin suddenly seemed sensitive to his own clothing, and there was a vague but bone-deep hurt from his neck to his knees.

But fine, whatever. He could deal with it, seeing as the office was closed and HPD were repaying the cover Five-O had given them over the last month. A week was more than enough time to rest up, drink honey and lemon. Sweat it the hell out. And still have time for the Marquis and the home maintenance.

After watching TV in a daze he thought about a sandwich. His training told him to eat – something to sit in his stomach, either to soak up what came next or to encourage a necessary purge. 

Steve was a firm believer in the intelligent body. Especially in _his_ intelligent body.

If his stomach didn’t feel like food, then food was not what it needed. Clearly.

He downed some Advil for the headache instead, abandoned the idea of honey and lemon as just too much effort seeing as he had neither in the house, took a shower which was too hot or too cold, he couldn’t decide, and then pitched on to his bed.

As he was drifting, not even under the covers, his phone vibrated, jumping against the lamp on the nightstand. He reached for it without bothering to check the caller I.D. It was a struggle to form words and his voice almost didn’t come out at all.

“Yello?”

A beat of surprise on the other end of the connection. _“Whoah, sorry, boss. I wake you?”_

It was Kono, still perky. But why not, seeing as she no longer felt like roadkill. And seeing as she was taking off for a boutique hotel on Maui with the love of her life.

“Yeah. No. It doesn’t matter.” He fought for clarity. “You need me?”

_“Just making sure you’re OK.”_

“I’m good.”

_“Really?”_

“Really.”

He guessed he shouldn’t be surprised she was checking up on him as he hadn’t had much to say for himself most of the evening. 

_“OK, then. So we’ll see you in a few days.”_

“Yeah.” His head was dizzy and he just wanted to be unconscious. 

A sensible voice – sometimes a good deal louder than Danny realized - was telling him he should capitulate, let Kono know he felt seriously awful. Like, suddenly, clinging on by his fingernails awful. He should ask her to get Chin over here. Let Chin take the almost unbearable weight off him for a while, like Steve knew he’d been longing to for… fuck knew how long. Since Wo Fat. Since forever.

Only Chin desperately needed not to have to do that. He needed his own space and calm, not complications.

_“Sleep well, boss.”_

“Yeah.”

He couldn’t say anything else, just ended the call, dropped the phone on to the nightstand with a clatter. Then he pressed his face into the pillow with a slight groan.

Jesus did he ever feel like crap. He guessed it had to be the ‘flu, or else some other bug creeping in on its coat-tails. The room didn’t feel right. The pillow didn’t either. Steve rolled himself with difficulty under the quilt, found himself kicking it off again within minutes.

Fever, he didn’t want fever. Fever could flick switches, and lately Steve had sensed a stack of queasily vivid dreams, all cued up and ready to mess with him if he wasn’t careful. Dreams way more disturbing than those pleasantly backwards visions Wo Fat’s drug regime had conjured for him.

He tossed and turned, cleared his throat, got up for a drink, felt woozy.

At some ungodly hour he found himself on his back, phone in a shaky grip, thumb reflexive over Danny’s number. Whenever he wanted to talk something out, bitch, ask a question, put his mind at rest … he’d always call Danny, the same as Danny would always call him. Apart from with Chin way back in their high school days, Steve had never behaved like that with any other close friend or lover – self-sufficiency being one of his key, relationship-wrecking drivers – but it was just how he and Danny operated. How they’d operated almost from the get-go.

And now he wanted to tell him stuff. 

Like how he knew he wasn’t the partner Danny deserved. That yes, it was really no use _being_ him seeing as he couldn't help save Mattie. That he should have either stopped Danny from going to Paris or else damn well gone with him. And that it was stupid but he wanted - something - way beyond their normal. God he was so sorry he didn’t have words for it.

Never mind words, even basic motor skills seemed out of reach at the moment.

“Fuck it,” he got out, annoyed at the airless croak his voice had become. He couldn’t even decide if Danny was contactable yet, and why would he ruin his vacation anyway? Danny had enough and way too much to deal with already.

He missed him so much he could have cried.

The phone slipped from Steve's hand, fell off the side of the bed on to the floor with a clonk. He managed to flail one, or both, of his arms, and then heaved himself to sitting. 

His ears buzzed fiercely as he came up. The sound was otherwordly, distressing. Like electricity. And as soon as he’d made that connection, he remembered.

Jenna shot to death as he hung in front of her, useless as a side of slaughterhouse meat.

Yellow liquid bubbling under his skin like punishment.

Steve's chest became tight and he knew he was going to throw up.


	5. The Real World

“Well that was weird,” Kono said. She stared at her phone as if it could explain the problem to her.

“What was weird?” 

Adam, suit rumpled, blinked at her, from his full-length sprawl on the couch. There was a bunch of stuff they needed to do before heading to Maui in the morning, and it ticked Kono off he was unable to get his ass into gear. He’d rocked up straight from the office and practically folded into the cushions as if he was set for the evening. Jonesing for a back rub too.

“The boss,” she said.

“Weirder than usual weird?”

Kono stopped staring at her phone and stared at him instead. “He just sounded...”

“Weird.”

“Spaced out.”

“You guys have just been chugging beers and he hasn’t had a day off in weeks, of course he sounded spaced out.”

“Well that’s another thing. Bossman's no drinker but he usually keeps up, especially if we’re kicking back. But tonight – he barely finished one bottle.”

Adam yawned. “Like I said, he’s tired.”

“I guess.” Kono came to flop down next to him. “But I know how he sounds when he’s tired — kinda bitchy to be honest. He doesn’t sound like he hardly knows what day of the week it is. Although he’s been like that since... well, you know.”

“Wo Fat.” 

Just the name could bring back the icy damp of the Makaloa basement. Empty hypos underfoot. The smell of burned flesh. McGarrett’s blown pupils.

Kono suppressed a shiver.

There was a little silence. Although she wasn’t looking at Adam she could guess the long-suffering expression on his face. “If you’re worried,” he said with a sigh, reaching out a socked toe to stroke down one thigh. “Call Chin.”

Kono forced away the image in her head. She looked at her phone again but it still wouldn’t give her an answer.

“’kay,” she said, and tapped Chin’s name in her contacts.

His voice at once lifted her spirits again.

They had a short, moderately entertaining, conversation about what constituted weird when it came to the boss. They talked up the possibility there was a problem he wasn’t telling them about that wasn’t to do with Wo Fat.

_“Because that one’s under control – obviously.”_

“Pretty crappy but nothing he wasn’t trained for, right?” 

Then they talked unknown problems down again on the basis they couldn’t possibly guess since he never told people stuff like that anyway. Not even people who were supposed to be close to him.

In one of their many talks about the men in their lives Catherine had told Kono that half the time she had no clue what was going on in Steve’s head. That he could be attentive and passionate and caring just fine, but without ever really giving of himself.

“To be fair, a lot of guys are like that,” Kono had said. “Although, yeah. I’m guessing Steve’s way ahead of the rest.”

 _“Listen,”_ Chin said in the end. He spoke in a weary, measured way as if he was almost too tired to process. _“I really think the last thing we should be doing is calling him. If he feels anything like I do the man just needs to switch off for a while. It’s why he gave us the week, you know?”_

“No,” Kono agreed. Chin was pretty good at attempts to explain the boss, having known him long ago. “You’re right. Of course. You’re being a manly man, and you’re right.” She half wondered what else he might know about Steve that nobody else did

 _“Yeah,”_ Chin said, _“Manly men know about other manly men. Now go pack, and have a great time.”_

“Shootz, you too, cuz.” She looked across at Adam whose manly eyes had fallen shut and shook her head. “What are you doing anyhow?”

 _“Not sure yet,”_ Chin said after a little pause. _“But vacation’s vacation, right?”_

“Oh God, yes.” She hugged herself. “See you in a week. And remember, no calling round.”

At the other end of the connection Chin snorted. _“Take it easy.”_

Kono finished the call and slung the phone on to the coffee table.

“Feel better?” Adam’s eyes had cracked open.

“I guess.”

“You know,” he said. “I was thinking. It must be hard for a guy like McGarrett to shut down Five-O.”

“We’re not shut down.” Kono didn’t even like the thought of that. 

“You know what I mean. Hard for him to let it all go, even for a few days. That’s probably what it is. High achievers are like that.”

“Which you would know.”

He grinned, his eyes crinkling, impossibly cute. “And then again, he’s probably really pissed off that Danny’s in Paris without him.”

Kono shuffled to let him put his feet in her lap, then stretched her legs to rest her own on the coffee table. “Now there’s a theory.”

“I quite like it.”

Kono quite liked it, too. She didn’t spend as much time deconstructing Steve and Danny’s relationship as Chin did, but she was totally on board with the idea of them as a couple. A highly dysfunctional couple nearly all the time, for sure, but with excellent potential for growth. She knew Chin stressed about them, but then Chin – like many of the Kelly-Kalakaua clan – was a worrier. Even more since losing Malia, who'd managed to fill a void for him. A void left by someone he'd never actually told Kono about. His continuing grief ate a little at her insides if she let it. But Kono was comforted by the fact that Chin had at least agreed to bereavement counseling. He’d faced up to falling apart and gone to try and do something about it. It was one of the gazillion reasons she loved him.

Steve and Danny, on the other hand, were all over the place. The professional partnership counselor they’d been obliged to visit must have noticed. Even though Kono was sure they spent all their sessions playing along and wouldn’t have told her jack squat about any of the important things. Kono didn’t quite understand, but it seemed as if recent events, instead of bringing them closer, had cut their relationship off at the knees.

But holy crap the potential was all there. If they’d only admit it. She really didn’t think she and Chin and Max were wrong about that. 

She stroked down the front of Adam’s right foot, curled her fingers round his big toe, her own heart full.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, voice laced with humor.

“You so don’t,” she said, tweaking the toe firmly.

He laughed. “You’re thinking about your outfit for their wedding.”

Kono smiled so hard her face hurt. “Man, wouldn’t that be something? The boss and the other boss getting hitched. Sweet!”

“I love you’re optimistic.”

She looked pitying. “I hate you’re not.”

“Seriously.” Really, ‘Seriously’ could have been Adam’s middle name. “Don’t get too keyed up. Those two… the connection’s solid, yes, but I’d say they have a long way to go.” He warmed to his theme. “McGarrett’s a closet basket-case with a head full of who knows what, Danny’s still in pieces over his brother, neither of them have a great track record on long-term, and let's face it, they have more baggage between them than you’re going to be taking tomorrow.”

“Funny guy.”

He grew sober. “I love you love the idea. Really, I do. But I just think the odds are stacked against them.”

“Ugh,” she said, pushing both his feet off her lap. “I also hate that guys are such killjoys.”

“Me maybe.” He swung himself round so he was sitting, planted his hands on his knees. “Your cousin not so much.”

Kono felt her heart constrict. Yeah, Chin was all about happy endings for other people. 

Still, they’d had fun trying to concoct some impossibly romantic situation Danny and Steve wouldn’t be able to resist or avoid. In the real world, of course, McGarrett was a ridiculous trouble magnet and Danny could be volatile as Mount Etna. Those two factors alone made concocted situations highly likely to backfire, messily. And the fact that Danny had taken it into his head to visit somewhere like Paris, for completely other reasons than getting romantic with Steve, seemed to be a very bad omen indeed.

“Well,” she said. “Chin said he’s going to come up with a plan. Because it's time. It’s gonna be his big project for the new year.”

“If he does, you'll tell me, right? Because, you know, if I can help.” 

Adam pushed himself up to standing, ran a hand through his hair. He held out a hand to pull her up too and when she was on her feet she pressed up against him, just happy to be happy.

That she was here, now, chest to chest with someone she loved, was something of a miracle. If you were talking about odds, then plenty had been stacked against her and Adam too, right from the start. And if you were talking about baggage… well, she’d almost been sunk by his, more than once. Literally. 

But it meant even more that none of it, what they had now, had fallen into their laps.

Kono had been born a hard worker. She’d been born not letting obstacles get in her way. And, if she thought about it, she was fairly sure, plot as Chin might, that Steve and Danny were going to have to do the heavy lifting work on this themselves.

Really it was just a question of whether they were up to it. Especially after the year they’d both had.

“We need to go pack,” she said, giving Adam a light shove.

“Well that will take all of five minutes. I presume you’re not planning to do anything except sit on a barstool in your jeans.”

“You have no idea about vacation do you?”

He laughed at her. “No,” he said. “Not a clue.”


	6. Paris

Little kids were great, Danny decided, although he kind of knew that already.

They were set up to be so cute, so demanding, so all-encompassing, that there was no space for anything else. Which really helped when your sinuses were jangling, you were going to be sleeping next door to your ex, and you'd realized coming here at all was a big-ass mistake.

It was two degrees below when he arrived in Paris. The air was frigid, it was sleeting, and Charlie Edwards was a bright-eyed little man with a hell of a head butt on him.

“This weather is great,” Danny had said, giddy with travel, when he’d toppled out of the cab at Rachel’s sister’s apartment. Even so, he’d been shivering ever since getting off the aircraft. His metabolism had defaulted to the island heat and he’d evidently forgotten what layers were.

“Daniel,” said Rachel’s sister, and she’d initiated five kisses to alternate cheeks which meant, as far as Danny remembered, that he was probably in favor. For now at least. He often felt like an interloper with her, there to threaten the bonds of sisterhood. Even more as her ridiculously French husband, like Stan, was away making money.

“Danny,” said Rachel, and she’d cupped just one cheek as she pressed her lips to his mouth, affectionate. Charlie was plumped into his arms almost as if he was Daddy come home, and however twisted it was he’d immediately decided he’d been right to come. That just-bathed little kid smell, that wild bouncing excitement. He’d been thinking a lot during the flight, about Steve’s stoic, wounded face when he knew Danny wouldn’t be vacationing anywhere near him, and other, shallower things like how much room the six foot streak of muscle took up in the shower and how breath-stoppingly beautiful he looked while he was doing it. As soon as he was down he’d texted him because he just had to – _bonjour paree miss you babe_ – and he’d had a genuine lump of misery in his stomach. 

But now, he had Charlie. Who seemed to love him.

And it was strange, and weird, and guilt-inducing, but he was looking forward to spending time with Rachel, too. Out of the context of their failed union, she was warm, fun, funny, beautiful, and the mother of his daughter. Rachel knew his mom and pop, and she’d loved Mattie.

She was also, as it turned out, going through one of her periodic spots of turbulence with Stan, and Danny had the feeling he needed to be wary of his enjoyment. Not because she had deliberate designs on him, but because he could never deny the tender spot he had for her, and because it was so much easier to imagine being a couple again when there were little kids.

“And are you really well again?” she demanded when he had a tiny glass of something very sweet and very alcoholic in his hand. “You look tired.”

“Fourteen and a half hours on a plane, Rach,” was all he said. He nibbled the glass, then shrugged and knocked back the contents in one. She smiled at him, fond. 

“God, Danny, we have so many things we need to do. Three days to see Paris! It’s going to be fantastic.”

Fantastic. So many things.

Yeah, three days in Paris with galloping jetlag would make for a blast all right. Danny didn’t know whether to be excited or appalled. They’d done London like this once and it had been one of the best trips of his life. But then look what happened later.

And yes, at every famous landmark, in every sidewalk bistro, on every metro train, the romance of the place barreled over Danny until he was nearly breathless. And it was mostly Rachel he was sharing it with, apart from a shattering afternoon and evening with his needy cousin Anthony during which they talked nothing but Mattie.

Spending time with Rachel seemed perfectly natural. But then again it also seemed all kinds of wrong. When that thought came to him, he told himself he had no reason to feel as if he was two-timing his partner, who was a putz. Yes they’d gone way beyond first base with each other on numerous occasions, but they were not, in any way, together. Because that would just be stupid, right?

“You know, Stan doesn’t actually like Paris,” Rachel told him at one point, hand linked through his arm as he pushed the stroller up some frosty boulevard that wasn’t the Champs Elysées but might just as well have been as it was broad, straight, tree-lined, and there was a beautiful building at either end.

“Stan is an idiot.”

She laughed. “No, he’s not an idiot. Stan is…” Her voice faded out in a way Danny didn’t like at all.

“Rach,” he said.

“Oh stop. You know us, we’re just having one of our patches.”

“Patches?”

“Seven-year itch.”

“You can get cream for that.”

She’d laughed and hugged his arm tighter.

Rachel’s sister was out when they got back that evening. Charlie was crashed over Danny’s shoulder while Rachel pushed the stroller laden with two baguettes, four bottles of wine, a bag of cherries, and a whole, offensive-smelling cheese. Danny’s feet were sore and he was completely spaced out from the time difference, not to mention the architectural and culinary overload.

He put Charlie down in his little bed in Rachel’s room, sat dozing in the peace while she took a shower. When she was done she padded through dressed in a robe. 

“You look nice,” he said.

“And so do you.” She smiled. “I’ve had the best day, Danny. Thank you.”

He waved a magnanimous hand while he tried to think what to say. “City of lovers,” popped out eventually.

She put her hands on her hips. “Well, we could.”

“No, I’m not saying that, I...”

Rachel smiled, mischievous. “Well, I slept with Stan while I was married to you and unhappy.”

Later Danny realized that it hadn’t felt like a kick in the belly anymore when she said that. Her words were not a proposition either, or at least he didn’t think so. More an appealing hypothetical. Hard as it was, Danny had never wanted to be the vengeful type when it came to Stan, because he knew Gracie's happiness depended on him being amenable. But it would be so easy with Rach. The idea of revisiting their old bedroom familiarity was undeniably attractive in these unreal surroundings. And yeah – he’d been shafted by Stan, so why not?

He got up to her level, pushed hair back from her face with two hands, kissed her forehead. 

“I think that ship has sailed, Rachel,” he said, firm. “I can’t live with you anymore, and I’ve finally gotten to the stage where I think I can live without you. You’ll always be mother to our beautiful daughter, that doesn't change. More than that... I’m thinking no. Not.”

She didn’t seem very surprised although there was a look in her eyes that told him that she’d have been completely on board.

“Are you going to settle down with... is it still Amber?” she asked instead.

He sighed, gestured a weary finito. “We’re on the kind of break that feels permanent.”

“Steve?”

Now that sure as hell took the wind out of his sails. He flailed, invisibly. “Excuse me?”

“Well I wouldn’t want to pry,” Rachel said, cool as a cucumber. “But it has occurred to me more than once there might be a little more to your partnership with Steve McGarrett than riding around all day in a very fast car.”

A rod of tension jammed through his spine. “Well of course there’s more to it,” he said. “He’s my...”

“You’re going to say best friend.”

“I’m sorry, is that not a good thing to say?”

Rachel came over very serious. Very serious indeed.

“Listen, Danny, about Steve-” she began and for fuck’s sake that was the exact moment the key sounded in the main door of the apartment and Rachel’s sister came breezing in.

Rachel immediately shut up and didn’t mention it again. Her sister didn’t know Steve, probably wouldn’t be interested even if she did. And then again there wasn’t really time and Danny guessed he should be relieved about that. Or disappointed

But in any case, if he wasn’t seeing something amazing (which he usually wondered if Steve had seen, too), Danny was sleeping the sleep of the recently sick. As a result the weekend flashed by so quick he didn't get the chance to dwell on that ‘more to your partnership’ can of worms his ex-wife had evidently just prized open with a crowbar and stuck under his nose.

And then early Monday morning, the day they were going to the Catacombs and forty eight hours before he expected to be heading out, Danny’s phone vibrated on the nightstand like a blaring danger signal. 

He woke instantly in a sweat, heart thumping. It was the first time in weeks he hadn't woken like that because of Mattie.

Steven, he thought at once. What the hell?


	7. Been There Before

Renee guessed she should have realized they’d come back from Chicago laden with way more than they took. Given it was just after Christmas and she and Lou both came from huge and generous families.

The piles of bags sailing around the carousel made her sleepy. It was late at night at Honalulu International, and the arrivals hall was relatively quiet. Will and Samantha were perched on the cart, watching the luggage in a trance. Lou came trailing back from the Mens’ room. She was glad he’d had a chance to sit around and let his dynamo of a mother fuss over him for a few days, but he was still baggy-eyed.

“I need a longer vacation,” he said, only half joking. 

“I’d forgotten how much I hate Chicago in the winter-time,” she responded. “Your mom thinks we’re on permanent vacation, and she makes a fair point.”

“We were right to go.”

“Of course we were, but next time you get some unexpected leave, let’s not take the kids out of school, which I have to justify, OK? Let’s just sit and stare at the ocean here for a week.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

He fished his phone out of his pocket, waited for it to take its time turning itself on. Renee yawned. After squinting at the screen to read the type, Lou wrinkled his brow. 

“This ain’t good. Four messages since we took off,” he said. “Six hours ago. All from Chin.”

If it had been any other member of the task force team Renee might have thought they were calling because they just couldn’t let stuff go. Lou said McGarrett had insisted they leave each other alone during their off time, but she’d doubted their ability to do that, Danny and Kono especially. Not Chin Ho Kelly though. His hyperactivity levels were generally dialed down pretty low – especially when they were officially supposed to be kicking back and recharging their batteries.

Which meant this was serious.

“What’s the problem?” she asked, not sure if she even wanted to know when she was this hungover from the effects of air travel and the end-of-vacation whiskey and sodas she’d had on the flight.

Lou read the four messages out loud, and strung together they did set her pulse to bumping a little faster.

_Hey Lou you spoken to McG?_

A break of several hours.

 _Still can’t raise Steve._

A couple more hours.

 _Something not right buddy heading back._

Then, terse.

 _Call me_.

He looked at her and then said, “Well, shit,” before hitting Chin’s number.

As he wandered off down the hall to make the call Renee turned her attention to the kids as they hauled the bags off the carousel one by one. By the time he got back to them he looked as if the nauseous feeling he always got from long-haul flying was magnified by about five. Will and Samantha were piling the bags on the luggage cart now, not taking much notice.

Renee watched his face as he came close. “Lou?”

“Yeah,” he said, and she was at once aware he wasn’t going to tell her everything. She understood, because she knew him so well, that something was going on that she couldn’t know.

“Did they find Steve?”

“They got him,” Lou said, sounding more tense than relieved. “Chin and Danny.”

“I thought Danny was in Paris until Wednesday?”

“Well he’s come home.” Lou was a little short. 

Renee waited for something else. “Honey?” she prompted in the end. A few yards away Will and Samantha were standing still by the cart and all its luggage, staring at them, too tired to be impatient.

“It’s all right,” he said with an over-elaborate shrug. “No panic. Bossman’s a little under the weather.”

“’Flu?” Renee indicated to the kids that they should begin pushing the trolley in the general direction of the exit and taxi stand, fell into step next to him. “That’s unlucky.”

“No. Yes, maybe. I don’t know. He’ll be fine, Max is there and the guys have his back.”

Lou had gone all internal and tight-lipped. Renee hated that.

The last time he’d done it in relation to McGarrett was when he’d had an unexpected early morning call from him that hadn’t been anything about work. He’d gone over to Steve’s house straight away. Although he’d never told Renee what it was all about, she’d guessed. She’d been the one who’d had to listen to him bitching about this arrogant Lieutenant-Commander that so got under his skin after all. Stags clashing antlers as she’d thought at the time. And having gotten to know him she’d also been the one who’d agreed Commander McGarrett needed to start dealing with some of the things in his head, quickly, before they ate him alive. Just as Lou had himself.

Renee got the whole thing about military elites. They weren’t like other people. They were specifically chosen and trained not to be like other people. But what had happened in Korea, in Afghanistan, in the Makaloa basement, had made her feel sick. Physical torture, psychological games, drugs, near-death experiences. To her mind everyone, however well trained and preternaturally unbreakable, had a limit with that kind of stuff. The whole team did, come to that, and none of them had dealt with it as far as she could see. It was as if they were stuck at a roadblock, waiting for McGarrett to give them some sign to move past.

Lord, it hadn’t been what she'd wanted at all when Lou joined Five-O, and she could still resent Steve for giving him that badge. 

There were many days she still wished her husband was a regular cop of any other sort, preferably behind a desk. But oddly, despite the dangers, despite her fears and occasional furies, Lou had never had a boss before who looked after him so well. Who cared in such a single-minded way about every member of his team. Renee had been surprised by that. She'd grown to appreciate Commander McGarrett despite what he put Lou through on a daily basis, and the fact that sometimes she wanted to slap some sense into him. In truth, she’d grown to worry for his reckless backside the same way she instinctively worried about the rest of her new, normally-configured _ohana_. 

Like Danny, for instance, who, oh God, had lost his brother – too horribly for words – not so long ago. And was clearly not doing well at all if he’d contemplate putting himself through some grueling emotional wringer in Paris. Danny, just like Steve, just like Chin Ho Kelly, needed an anchor.

But really, Renee supposed that wasn’t exactly news. Wasn’t there some science that said men did a whole lot better with a spouse?

“So, if Steve's OK, we can go home, right?”

Lou rubbed a hand down his face. “Yeah, so it’s a little more serious than ‘flu.”

“You don’t say.”

“But he’s being treated.”

“Good. So you don’t need to go over there?”

They’d reached the doors out to the taxi stand now. Lou looked this way and that as if trying to decide.

“It’s just that maybe they need someone to spell them for a while.”

“Sounds a lot more serious than ‘flu, honey.” She was mildly ironic.

“Maybe.”

She sighed, giving in to it.

“You go,” she said. “Help out your team. I’ll get ours home.” She smiled at him, to let him know she was onside.

“You’re a peach.”

“Oh, baby, I am so much more than that.”

“Moooooom,” Will groaned in disgust as she reached up for a kiss.

Lou was the one who broke away. “You quit your whining, William, get in the next cab that comes and do as your mother tells you. I’ll see you pesky kids later.”

Renee shooed Lou towards the head of the line. 

“Go on.”

“See you soon.”

“Keep me updated, right?”

“Sure.”

She made a face. “Sure.”

Actually she didn’t need Lou to say anything else. 

Renee Grover knew enough to figure that one way or another maybe McGarrett had reached a limit.

And that made the hair prickle on the back of her neck.


	8. Bad Things

It was evening when Steve made it back. 

He was was pretty sure it was only a temporary return. There was a faint imprint of buzzing in his ears, and his ribs hurt.

On the positive side he slowly worked out he was lying against too many pillows, half propped up. Not in a chair. Not on the floor.

A bed. His bed, he had to remind himself. He was in his own bed, his hands were free, and his heart didn’t have to keep racing like this.

The lamp on the nightstand next to him was off but there was light spilling in from next door. Curiously the room – his room, he also had to remind himself – smelled of antiseptic and he had a sheet and blanket laid over his lower half instead of the quilt. 

Images, splintered and troubling, lurked at the edges of his consciousness, and yet he thought he was lucid. Unless this wasn’t really his room.

Steve cleared his throat, felt something rattle low in his chest. He felt the absence of Danny all those miles away like a hollow space in his midriff. When he closed his eyes again for a moment the bed dipped.

“Hey,” a familiar and totally unexpected voice said, “Did I hear you awake?”

Steve jerked his eyes open, shocked.

Danny was actually there, sitting on the side of the bed. For a second Steve’s lucidity slid away from him. As if he was falling. 

“Whoa,” Danny said, urgent. Then shaky. “You. You are not at all well, babe.”

Steve struggled back yet again. He tried the obvious question but his voice wouldn’t cooperate.

“Chin’s been taking care of you,” Danny continued. He frowned. “How you feeling?”

“Rough,” Steve got out, the admission painful. Whatever was loose in his chest rattled again. Danny’s frown deepened. 

“Yeah, Chin called in Max, who seems to think so much of you he'll look the other way when you’re being an idiot. Turns out you didn’t want what everybody else had. No, you, of course, decided to pass Go, straight to pneumonia. About which precisely nobody is amazed.”

“Wait.” It wasn’t that Steve didn’t believe him. More that he objected to the notion he’d somehow done it on purpose.

Danny plowed on. “Right now you’re home because King’s has MRSA and Tripler’s full, but I’m guessing you’ll be pleased. Anyhow, and listen to me here – it’s not the walking kind of pneumonia this time, it’s the stay in bed and let people take care of you because you’re really very sick kind.”

The rambling told Steve that Danny had been seriously scared. Was still seriously scared perhaps. But he still didn’t quite get why Danny was here at all.

“Paris?” 

Danny stared at him. “Really? That’s your next question?”

Steve was frustrated. Why would Danny think he wouldn’t ask him about it? Why would he think that Danny and Paris wasn’t the main thing on his mind? 

“Danno?” He didn't even really know what he was trying to ask.

“It’s very pretty,” Danny said as if he was still confused, too. He reached to feel Steve’s forehead, cupped his jaw. “Unlike you.”

Steve tried to decide if it felt like pneumonia. The room, and Danny, were shimmery and his eyeballs were hot. The back of one hand and the inside of his elbow both stung which made him think of field hospitals. As did the incongruous, deeply disturbing sight of a portable IV stand in the background, the tubing and bag hanging empty. His side hurt, and he had the strong sensation that he needed to cough but that it was being suppressed by drugs. And that if he did cough it would be linked inevitably with that loose thing in his chest shifting and then him emptying his guts over the side of the bed. Which he had a sudden vague memory he’d already done several times. He wasn’t clear if this had happened when Danny had been here, or just Chin, or whether he had in fact been on his own.

“Long?” he croaked out.

Danny fussed with the bedcovers. “So I left Thursday. Kono didn’t like how you sounded and after a couple days Chin caved and decided to check in on you. Just as well. Because of course you decide to do this when none of us are around. I mean, that's the McGarrett way, right? Chin found you delirious on your bathroom floor Sunday afternoon when you hadn’t returned his calls. You... OK." More fussing. "You thought he was Wo Fat.”

“No,” Steve said, on a full-body wince, and then, “Shit.”

“Yeah, he thinks so too. You landed one on him, nearly split his skull open, but lucky for us you didn’t have the juice to actually kill him.”

“No,” Steve said again, something tightening around his windpipe. The need to cough and throw up rose again.

“Easy.” Danny’s gaze roved his face, expression deeply unhappy with what he saw. He curled a hand around Steve’s forearm to secure him. “C’mon, it’s OK. You'd taken against a couple of closet doors too, but compared to them Chin's fine.”

Steve swallowed several times, getting control of it. He felt as if he needed bearings, coordinates. He stared down at Danny’s fingers curled around his arm, clenched and flexed his fist until he could feel the soreness of his knuckles under some binding. “So it’s what? Sunday?”

“Uh-uh. Chin called me Monday when you were going downhill, and I caught the first flight out.” Danny uncurled the fingers, but kept his palm resting against Steve’s arm. “Max ran some antivirals and fluids through when he came over and right now we’re on a watching brief as to whether you get admitted somewhere. The bar is not set nearly low enough for my liking. And, it’s Tuesday evening.”

The missing hours made Steve feel queasy and on edge. He didn’t even quite believe them. It was too many days he didn’t recall. “You came back.”

“Well yes, as I am here sitting on your bed, I think that’s a pretty good theory.”

“Danny.”

He still wanted to tell him stuff but he still didn’t know how.

“Steven. I mean, what do you think? I got you. Always. You know that.”

Steve screwed shut his eyes. He was aware that Danny had reached for something on the nightstand and he heard the unmistakeable shake of a bottle of pills.

“Chin still here?” he asked without opening his eyes.

“Downstairs.”

“Wo Fat,” Steve said, swallowing again. He couldn’t shake the feeling the man had been here. Actually been here. Over and above Chin.

“You need to take a couple of these bad boys,” Danny said. “We have to keep your fever down or the men in white coats will come take you away.”

As Steve forced open his eyes again an unwelcome shift in perception took place. It sometimes happened when coming down from really strong painkillers. A rushing sensation went through his veins as if he’d been shot up with anxiety.

“Danny,” he managed on a hitched breath, feeling the terrible pull of something that wasn’t sleep.

“Hey, hey. Stay with me.” Danny rocked forward, softly scolding. His blue eyes locked on to try and keep the connection, lines of worry cutting into his brow. Steve almost couldn't hold on. He flinched when knuckles gently traced his jaw. Although his capacity for it seemed boundless, Danny didn’t do tender with him, hardly ever. “Steve, come on. I’m right here, see? You’re OK.”

Steve’s hand stuttered against the bed. 

Too muddled to object, he let Danny put the pills on his tongue, swallowed them down with some lukewarm water. There were footsteps on the stairs and it made him shiver, not sure if it was cold or fear, and close his eyes again. Just until he could decide. The bed dipped once more as Danny got up and then he vaguely heard voices just outside the door.

Chin.

Steve didn’t hear the question but he heard Danny’s quiet, “Yeah, still loopy as hell, not gonna lie.” There was some murmuring, and then Danny’s voice came again, barely containing anger. “Oh what, so you think this is a fucking psychotic break now?” A pause and a distinct switch in tone, from punchy to contrite to concerned. “Sorry, man, sorry, I know. You're right, he's in trouble. I'm just... How you doing anyhow? You look like shit.”

“Hey,” Steve said, pissed off and trying to raise his voice beyond a whisper. He needed to set them straight on the drama before somebody said or did something they regretted. “I can hear, you know.”

There was a reluctant silence, and then Danny came back in, Chin just behind him. Steve grit his teeth together. 

“I’m fine,” Chin said. “Don’t look at me like that.”

Steve’s teeth continued to grit, stopping him from speaking. From saying the sorry Chin deserved

“Listen, given you could hardly keep your feet, the accuracy was impressive.” Chin touched rueful fingers to the swelling on his face. There was bruising, red and purple, a cut over one brow closed with steri-strips, but his eye was still just about open. He glanced at Danny and back to Steve, then said, “It’s good to see you awake.”

Steve fought the spiral of scrambled thoughts in his brain. 

He’d hit Wo Fat. No, it was Chin. He’d hit Chin.

Which OK. Because hadn’t Chin hit him? 

Although no. That couldn’t be.

Wishing he could draw in a full, cleansing breath, he tried to stay on track. His head definitely didn’t feel right – not right at all – and he wasn’t sure if they could see that. The gaps in his memory were freaking him the hell out.

“In my gut it didn’t feel like you were doing home maintenance.” Chin was looking at him carefully, almost wary, and Steve felt a flush of paranoia. As if there was something else going on they weren’t telling him.

“Kono?” Steve was relieved at how well he'd zeroed in. 

“She’s due back tomorrow morning so we’ve left her alone. Lou’s at the airport.”

“Some vacation.” His voice eased into the kind of wry he hoped they’d recognize.

“Oh I don’t know,” Danny said, sure enough relaxing one notch. “I saw the Eiffel Tower, and it was so cold I had to buy gloves.” He looked as if he had more to say but was sitting on it.

A powerful internal reveille kicked in. Steve pushed his back against the pillows, bracing his palms on the bed. “I should get up, I have to...” He trailed off, not sure what it was. The concern on Danny and Chin’s faces was bugging him.

“There’s nothing for you to do.” Danny was soothing, overly so. He had one arm outstretched, fingers splayed, as if that alone would stop him getting up. “I told you. This is staying in bed sick, Steve. It’s non-negotiable. And if you try anything, I’m calling you out and it won’t be this bed, you hear me?”

Steve allowed himself a slow, reluctant slump. The certainty he needed to be on his feet wouldn’t go away. He clenched one hand, glad it hurt him. “I can’t,” he said, suddenly angry with them. “I can’t stay here.”

“Sure you can, unless it's for a bathroom break, and we have to help with that. Those pills kicking in yet?” 

“No. Fuck. Maybe.” His voice was a wheeze, the room was beginning to whirl, and then he felt a hand on his cheek, his forehead, his chest.

Danny sounded panicky. “Jeez, jeez, jeez, this is... he’s burning up here.”

“You want I go get some ice?” Chin said, muffled.

“Yeah, good, that would be good.”

“You OK with him?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Steve jerked his head from the intrusive hand. “He think I’m going to smack you in the face, too?”

“No,” Danny said, sounding less than sure. “He doesn’t. But you’re giving every sign you intend to bolt - which would be a very bad idea indeed by the way - and we know from experience it takes two grown men to put you down. At least.”

Steve felt a strange jump of muscles, shaking him against the pillows. Shaking loose the bad thing in his chest. He heard a tight, repressed groan and didn't know what that was. He slipped anchor, drifted off, then another brief wave of lucidity hit. He didn't like it much, struggled to get to his feet again.

"Hey, tough guy, hey!" Danny's voice was almost a yelp. "Give me a break would you? You need to calm down. There's nobody here but us, me and Chin. Steve. Steven! You have to listen to me. You're all right, you're safe, we're all safe, give it up." A breathless pause. "OK, so really, really not doing good. Yeah, we need Max again, now. Go.” 

Danny stopped talking. Steve felt as if he'd gone again, a long way away. This wasn't his bed anymore. The inside of his arm stung like a sonofabitch.

“What are you giving me?” he thought he’d asked.

Drugs, taking him out of his head.

He fought, as long and as hard as he could.


	9. A Plan

“Whoah,” Lou fluffed by way of a greeting. He passed through the open McGarrett front door, clapped Chin on the shoulder. “That’s one hell of a strike, Kelly.”

Chin knew better than to touch it now, although that was his instinct. He did put several fingers to the back of his head, though, to where his skull had impacted against a wall and left him with a goose-egg.

“What do you expect, it was McGarrett firing on all cylinders, ” he said, the acid shock of the blow still pooled in his gut. Being mistaken for an evil sociopath and then hit by a perennially combat-ready soldier was its own special hell. Frankly he thought he was lucky not to be brain-damaged. 

“Does he know?” Lou asked as the front door shut quietly behind him. He gave Danny’s luggage piled under the window a look, then scanned the mess in the room and shook his head.

“He was told, before the fever took hold again. So whether he's retained it or not is anyone’s guess. He's barely holding it together.”

Grover sighed and put his hands on his hips. “Sitrep?”

“Max pushed more fluids and antivirals. Just left again. Steve's not breathing so well and he has a hell of a temp. Danny’s up with him.” He rubbed at his good eye. “Won’t stand down, running on empty.”

Lou gave him the once-over. “And Danny’s the only one running on empty? Well, you know, that’s why I’m here. You should both go home, eat, and get some rest.”

Chin waved Grover towards the kitchen and the permanently full coffee pot. Now Lou was in front of him it wasn’t so easy to accurately explain the mess going on here.

“Yeah,” he said, hooking a mug down from the cupboard with a finger. “So it's not that straightforward, Lou. Think of this as a frontline field hospital, OK? And think of you, me and Danny as the full quota of untrained volunteers in the frontline field hospital.”

Danny appeared then in the doorway with his shirtsleeves rolled up, looking rough. He raised his hand at Grover in downbeat greeting. “And then think of Steve as the unstable patient,” he added to Chin's description, “who keeps hallucinating enemies and is freakishly strong.”

Grover’s mouth made an ‘o’. Then he said, “So he isn’t done fighting?”

“No,” Danny said, rubbing one shoulder.

Chin handed Grover a full mug, reached up to get another one for Danny. Grover inhaled the scent of coffee, then took a sip.

“How long was he here alone?”

“Thursday through Sunday.” Chin couldn't stand the fact that Steve had spiraled down without any of them here. He poured Danny's coffee, pushed the mug towards him.

“Two days, three nights,” Danny said, sweeping a jerky hand back through his hair. “Fuck knows how he didn't manage to damage himself. We found signs he’d been down on the lanai, out in the garage. He was dressed for action, had a loaded weapon by the bed. The front door was barricaded, the back door was wide open, the whole place was a mess and he'd half trashed the bathroom before he couldn't stand up anymore. He doesn’t seem to remember any of it. Not a fucking thing. And he could have killed Chin.”

“It’s the fever, Danny.”

“Sure,” Danny said, clenching and then releasing his hands before he picked up the mug. “I keep telling myself that.”

Grover took another gulp. “Let me get this straight,” he said in a quiet voice. “No hospital admission. We circling the wagons here or what?”

“Totally.” Chin cut his eyes to Danny. “At the moment it's just between us, Max, and Kono when she gets here. Max reckons if Steve gets admitted after what they’ll see as an assault on a co-worker, they’ll be obliged to follow their own safety procedures. And you understand what I mean by that, right?"

Danny scrubbed fiercely at the center of his forehead with the heel of one hand but he didn't say anything.

"They know what they’re dealing with," Chin carried on, "and safety procedures is what they’ll do. Then there’ll be a psych evaluation, the full works. They’ll put him into the system and whatever their motives and as much as he might need help I don’t think he can deal with that right now, do you? Not to mention we’d never get near him.” 

The idea of them letting anyone strap restraints on Steve after the Makaloa basement – an incident that had never been officially recorded – was just not going to fly. Danny already looked ready to combust at the thought.

“I think you’re right,” Grover agreed. “Danny?”

“He’s sick,” Danny said, voice on the edge of a crack. “I hear what you're saying but he has pneumonia and it's serious.”

“It’s not just that though, is it?” Grover said to him, straight. Chin was glad he was there. Danny – as he’d hope and expect – was emotional right now. Almost not thinking straight.

Flicking an irritated glance at him as if he knew what thought had just gone through his head, Danny sucked his teeth. 

"OK, maybe the pneumonia's hiding something else, something that scares the crap out of me. And maybe this is what Steve would want us to do if he could get his head straight enough to tell us. Maybe."

"Listen," Chin said, "I'm finding it hard to get beyond maybe, too. But do we agree? We going to keep the wagons in place - until Max tells us otherwise?" 

Danny chewed the side of his thumb-nail. "Yes," he said, unwilling. "Yes. But as long as he’s here and not in the hospital, and as long as we’re all playing doctor, the bottom line is he can’t be left.”

“Right.” Grover tipped more coffee down his throat. “My shift, then. All I have is jetlag. You two look like you've been wrestling a grizzly bear for the last day and a half.”

Chin looked at Danny, willing him to take the offer. 

“OK,” Danny said. “But you yell, right?”

“You think I’m going to let McGarrett try any of his ninja shit on me? Of course I’ll yell.”

They followed him out of the kitchen, watched the large figure stomping up the stairs. His very size was a comfort somehow. Steve would have a job on his hands getting past Lou. And if it came to it, Lou had enough edge to drop him for his own good anyhow.

Man, what a fuck-up.

Chin let himself lower, slowly, into an easy chair. He thought he should probably get up and take something for the splitting headache he had, which coffee was not making any better, but it was just too good being off his feet. 

Danny sank on to the couch opposite, leaned his head back, and stared at the ceiling.

“Is this anyone’s fault?” He sounded wrecked.

“Only Wo Fat’s, Danny,” Chin said firmly, although he’d toyed with blaming himself. For waiting too long. He should have known how hard it was for Steve to ask for help, even when he was well.

"Steve of course would tell me not to second guess myself, but I'm thinking Paris was a substandard idea."

"You saw your cousin, right?"

"I did, and it was a good thing. My folks will be glad."

"Not so substandard then. Steve's right."

"He had the sadface about it."

"Yeah," Chin said. "He misses you when you're not here. Hard to believe, I know."

Danny was silent, tracking something unseen in the shadows above. Chin felt as if he was building up to something and he hoped it wasn’t going to be a speciality rant. He closed his eyes for a moment, tried to channel even a smidgeon of what he’d been searching for in the Makaleha mountains.

“You know about me and Steve, right?” was what Danny said eventually, still staring upwards. 

Chin’s eyes popped open. That he had not been expecting.

“I mean, you know that him and Catherine isn't... and we... there’s... shit, I don’t even know myself.”

Yeah, straight to the chase after all. Danny clearly realized there was absolutely no point in avoiding issues right now. Relief splashed over Chin, spiced with more than a hint of apprehension. If Danny wasn’t going to avoid issues then he couldn’t either.

So Chin dove straight in. With Steve this bad and Danny this desperate there didn’t seem much point not to.

“You I can only assume. But Steve, oh I know about Steve," he said, meaningful. And then, "Yeah, so he kissed me once."

Danny didn’t react at first except to scrunch his face, still tipped towards the ceiling. As if, really, there was nothing that would surprise him about Steve anymore. Then slowly he righted himself, looked across the room.

“Huh,” he said.

“It was at a party during my sophomore year. He was on leave from Annapolis.” Chin exhaled slowly, testing how he felt about it after all this time. “We were drunk.” He met Danny’s eyes squarely, spoke with feeling. For all their closeness at high school Steve had dropped him like a hot potato when he’d first left home and it had more than hurt. At the time Chin had thought he might be mad at him forever. “The kiss was great, don't get me wrong, and I was so damn pleased to see him. But far as I was concerned, it was kind of unexpected. So, then. Then I punched him in the mouth.”

Danny was cautious. “I can see why anyone would want to.”

“Yeah, and if I hadn’t, his date would have. You know, Steve was always acting out back then. Between the car bomb and the training kicking in. I think he was still so mad with John for sending him and Mary away.” Chin touched fingers to his swollen face yet again, remembering. “He just came blazing in that night, like it was his right. I hit him pretty hard. So, maybe this was some payback. Somewhere in his fritzed brain.”

“Huh,” Danny said again. “And did you ever, like, talk about it? The sophomore kiss?”

“That? No. By the time he next came home to O’ahu I was with Malia the first time, and he was in the zone, you know? All the acting out had stopped. He’d graduated with distinction, had his commission, and he just seemed so disciplined, so focused. Don’t ask, don’t tell. All that. It was like the joy had been burned out of him already and I couldn’t do it. And then after that he was always away serving and I became a cop, didn’t see him again until John was killed and everything was re-set.”

“So you do know about us,” Danny said.

Chin leaned back into the cushions. He looked over at him like he was simple in the head. This wasn't quite the carefully thought-out plan he'd envisaged. “What I know is that you need to decide what the hell you’re both doing.”

Danny scrubbed a hand over his face. “Jeez, this is like truth or dare without the fun.”

“Steve’s drowning,” Chin said, and now he said it out loud the certainty frightened him. Made him a tad cranky. “Has been for a while. And you’re not much better right now. Just bail each other out already, would you? Before it’s too late.”

“What’s made you so bossy?” Danny said, resentful.

“Seeing two people I care about wasting precious time,” Chin snapped back.

Danny drummed both sets of fingers on the couch. “Aren’t you making assumptions here? You’re supposing I want him. You’re supposing he wants me. Like that, I mean, in a big way. Not just being hot for each other, which yes, it’s true, we kind of really are.”

“Danny,” Chin said, massaging one temple with steepled fingers. “For nearly five years I have been watching you two wanting each other in a big way. So please. Would you do all of us a favor and just take a fucking chance on it?”

“Well there’s no need to be like that.” Danny sat forward, elbows to knees. 

“What?” Chin demanded. “You’re telling me you don’t want to?”

Danny rubbed his shoulder again. “The Insane One just about broke me in half a while ago. Does that seem like a sound basis for a relationship to you? I mean, does it?”

“So that’s a no?”

“He needs therapy more than he needs a boyfriend.”

“Oh for... Jesus, Danny, stop fighting it would you? Don't you get it? As long as the boyfriend’s you and not some asshole like Nick Taylor, those two things would go together just fine.”

Danny looked skeptical at that. He clearly didn’t like to be reminded of Nick Taylor, either. But then he stared at the floor, mind working, and Chin waited him out. For everything, all the bluster and noise, the seeming inability to be positive for more than two seconds at a time, Danny Williams was an intellectual. He was a thinker, a man grounded in an appreciation of what was important. Not to mention that he was a _mensch_ of the highest order. If he was to take on Steve, he would be as loyal and as honest and as devoted as Chin himself would have been once upon a time.

Love him, was what he wanted to say. Just, love him.

If Danny could handle the pressure, he'd be repaid, Chin was pretty sure, a hundredfold.

“You know,” Danny said. “You may not be the first person who has hinted something of this.”

“I’m amazed.”

Danny’s eyes crinkled slightly, a rare break in the tension of the last twenty four hours. Then he shook his head.

“And the whole sophomore kiss and the smack in the mouth thing? Where do you stand with that now?”

Despite the drumming in his head, Chin reckoned he was clear. He and Steve had both chosen their paths, or had their paths chosen for them. There should be no retracing of steps. He wasn’t exactly happy – not without Malia – but he was pretty sure now that he could be. Just had to hope and pray Steve could get there, too.

“I’m good, Danny.”

“Really? Because, you know, if there was a chance for you and him to-"

“We tried it on for size, we were young. Man’s like a brother to me, you know he is, but it’s you he loves.”

Danny's eyes widened. He was silent for a long while.

“Chin Ho Kelly,” he said at last. “You are a hopeless romantic of the highest order, you know that? Most days Steve and I want to kill each other, and yet somehow you have painted us in hearts and flowers.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Maybe you’re right to, I don’t know for sure. All I do know is I need to get Steve through whatever’s going on with him and that’s first priority.” He squinted at Chin more closely. “And you know what, I think I’m going to get you some more ice for that eye, and some painkillers, seeing as we're neck deep in them here. How does that sound?”

It actually sounded really, really good. All was quiet upstairs but Chin didn’t suppose it was going to stay that way. If he and Danny could catch a few while they had the chance...

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, thanks. As long as-”

Danny raised a hand to stop him, patted it quietly over his own heart. "No," he said. "You're right, you are. We can’t do it like we have been anymore because there's some crazy-ass bigger picture going on here. I know that, I always knew that. Him, well it's hard to tell. But don't worry, buddy, I can't... I'm not going to ignore this.” He removed the hand, gestured at the ceiling. “Steve’s the one who does that. I’m going to carry on being the mature half of the partnership and act accordingly.”

“I look forward to it." In his intense relief, Chin thought about sleep. He felt his eyes beginning to droop, his words beginning to slur. "Hey, you want to take one of the spares, I can sleep on the couch.”

“Ha,” Danny said coming over to extend a hand to help lever him to his feet. “No way, the bed is all yours. Believe me, I slept on this thing for weeks while I was his unhappy roomie. It feels almost like home.”

“Is that a good start?” Chin asked. He had a sudden vision of the two of them sharing the McGarrett house for real and wasn’t sure if it filled him with joy or alarm.

“It’s either a good start,” Danny said, hand on his back as he steered him towards the stairs, “or it’s a really terrible one.”


	10. Doctors Without Borders

As a general rule, Max Bergman greatly preferred his dead patients to any living ones. They were more predictable for a start, but just as fascinating. 

He’d only made an exception here – a huge, possibly catastrophic exception in professional career terms – because it was personal. It didn’t mean he thought nothing of it, however. Far from it, even though he’d patched up Commander McGarrett off the radar once before. No, in general, Max preferred to stick to rules. Rules were interesting and served a purpose, while breaking them could be chaotic. Max was not a huge fan of chaotic, but he’d found he couldn’t get away from it while working alongside the Governor’s task force.

And now here they were presenting him with chaotic once again.

“I wouldn’t ask, Max,” Chin had said when he’d first called from McGarrett’s house. “But you’re _ohana_ , you know what’s been going on.”

Max knew. He was even part of this story. It was he who’d double-checked Wo Fat’s DNA himself, delivered the results into the Commander’s own hands. Seen the uncharacteristic dread in his eyes. He’d double-checked the blood spatter sample taken from McGarrett’s car, too, the day he’d been abducted. And then insisted on being the one to tell the rest of the team it was definitely Steve’s. 

Not that he’d ever managed to get used to calling him Steve, despite his insistence. The man currently upstairs hacking poisonous effluvium into a bucket would always be the Commander. Which, for Max, was merely an indication of how highly he esteemed him and in no sense an indication of any lack of affection.

As soon as he’d heard the Commander was in trouble Max had gathered up the makings of a portable hospital diagnostic and treatment kit and driven there at barely under the speed limit with Beethoven’s Eroica symphony blaring from his car speakers as extra propulsion and to keep him awake. 

Lieutenant Kelly had let him in the front door holding an ice pack to the back of his head. There was blood leaking from a cut above one eye.

“Is this?” Max had practically hiccupped. “Did he?”

“Yes. And he did.” Lieutenant Kelly had seemed somewhat in shock, unsurprisingly. Even a little upset, Max surmised, but trying not to show it.

“I would ascertain then that the Commander is not quite himself?” 

“Out of his head with a fever when I got to him. He’s calmer now, in bed, but he’s not doing good.”

Upstairs Max had not been taken aback to find the patient was no longer in bed. Or particuarly calm. In fact he was very much out of bed and more or less upright, if precariously so.

“Commander McGarrett,” he’d said in as unthreatening a voice as he could manage, unnerved by the glazed, off-kilter stare. “Will you let me help you?”

The Commander, eyes hot as coals, had looked aggressive, and then unsure. And then he’d just folded sideways on to the bed with a pained wheeze. Max hadn’t been sure if it was through obedience or by accident.

At any rate, the patient went from half upright to half unconscious in ten seconds flat. Which did enable primary treatment to be carried out. From the worryingly high temperature and profound crackling sound in the lungs Max had diagnosed pneumonia. He was pretty sure it had developed secondary to influenza, and decided an MRI wouldn’t show anything different. The portable IV stand was set up, a piece of generally unused equipment that Max had last utilized when he’d found Commander McGarrett unconscious and bleeding from an abdominal wound in his kitchen.

Once he’d located a vein in one wildly shaking arm, he managed, with Lieutenant Kelly’s help, to get a line in. 

“The recent aspiration pneumonia has clearly left a wide open window for the virus,” he explained to the Lieutenant, who was now standing at the foot of the bed looking a little woozy himself. “A virus which the October vaccination has unfortunately been unable, on this occasion, to combat. And it has become a seriously problematic respiratory illness due to the fact that it has gone untreated.”

Some of that was the Commander’s own fault, clearly.

“We didn’t know,” Lieutenant Kelly had said, very unhappy. “Why the hell doesn’t he call us?”

Max thought there really was very little point at this stage in analyzing Commander McGarrett’s persistent behavior patterns. His past medical records alone would have led him to believe he was capable of recovering by himself. Berating him for failure to do so seemed counter-productive. 

“I am a doctor, but not really the kind you need,” he'd said, suddenly unsure.

“Max you’re absolutely who we need, I don’t want him taken into Tripler.” The Lieutenant had been almost fierce. 

Max knew both main hospitals remained over-stretched, but he didn’t think this was what the Lieutenant was talking about.

“Well, I’ve given him intra-venous antiviral and anti-pyretic medications, plus essential re-hydration. Beyond that he needs round the clock care, bed rest and assistance to clear his lungs. Oxygen therapy is a possibility if his condition worsens.”

“And we can do all that here?”

“If you’re willing to go through what are some quite unpleasant processes, yes.”

Lieutenant Kelly had advanced into the room, and although Max might have expected him to keep his distance, since Commander McGarrett was already more alert, he didn’t. Instead he sat down in the chair that had been dragged to the edge of the bed earlier and put a firm hand on the Commander’s shoulder. “You hear that, Steve?” he said. “We’re going to handle everything here.”

Max cleared his throat. “I am not in disagreement, but can you tell me why you are so reluctant to have him admitted to Tripler?”

The Lieutenant had pointed to his cut and swollen eye in response. 

“I could say I walked into a door, but he has the imprint of my face on his fist. It’s really not going to look good, and they can oblige the Governor to explain exactly how Steve has played full immunity and means since Five-O began. They’re not the bad guys at Tripler, I know that, but they do things a certain way. It’s too risky, just way too risky.”

“Yes,” Max had said, uneasy and protective at the same time. “Even on a casual inspection it is clear to me your injury was neither accidental nor self-inflicted.”

“He was in a bad place to begin with, Max, and then this fever got him all turned around. He lashed out, not even knowing it was me.”

A Bad Place. This, Max happened to think, was a very typical, and rather frustrating, euphemism for traumatic stress. Particularly from the more alpha males of the species.

“Who did he think you were?” He was almost sure he knew.

Lieutenant Kelly looked uneasily at the Commander. “I could see how agitated he was so I backed right off at first, but he kept tracking me, saying this same thing. ‘You’re not going to break me.’ Just that, over and over.”

“Wo Fat.” Max had felt his stomach tighten with unexpected anger.

The Lieutenant had nodded. “And it’s not just what that man did to him. It’s Jenna Kaye, it’s Steve’s mother, a whole train of events. He’s never talked about it to us – not properly, you know how he is – and I just really don’t want the Tripler trauma guys being the ones to force it out of him because they think he’s a danger. And if the press got a hold of it... hell, if some people in HPD got a hold of it. It’s just... Steve doesn’t need that.”

“Indeed. What the Commander needs is his team.”

Lieutenant Kelly had been admiring. “Well, yes. And I know they'll agree with me.”

“As it happens I also agree, wholeheartedly. There is clearly an underlying and undiagnosed traumatic stress-related problem, but the route to the Commander seeking help with that does not seem to be the Navy in the first instance, as admirable as I know their professionals to be.”

“He needs the love without the tough, right?”

“Very well expressed, Lieutenant.”

“Max, you can call me Chin.”

“I know. And I also know that Commander McGarrett is not the only one who needs to deal with what happened. And not to ignore it just because he does. You are a co-dependent unit, with a propensity to feel guilt when you are not immediately able to help one another. And anger towards those who inflict pain on one of your own. If Officer Kalakaua does not have bad dreams about Wo Fat even now I’d be very surprised.”

The intensity of the situation seemed to have loosened his tongue.

“Are you our conscience now, Max?”

“I would not presume. I just have my opinions.”

A smile had touched the battered face. “And we’re grateful.”

Max knew they were. 

The second time he came to the McGarrett house, Captain Grover and Detective Williams were there. Both of them had come straight from the airport, like homing pigeons.

“Thank the Lord for you, Dr. Bergman,” the Captain said.

“You sure about this, Max?” was Detective Williams’ more robust response. “Our boy is a complete mess. You absolutely sure we shouldn’t even now be loading him on to a bus for full emergency transfer to King’s? I mean, how bad can MRSA be if he’s this sick already?”

“If Commander McGarrett is taken to King’s they’ll likely transfer him to Tripler once he’s stabilized. If he goes to Tripler they’ll want full details of everything that’s happened since he became unwell. Military psychiatric evaluation is very thorough, but I would not call it either gentle or holistic.”

“What he means by thorough, Danny,” Captain Grover growled, “is that they’ll shackle his ass to the bed before they do anything else.”

Max coughed. It wasn’t untrue, but he probably wouldn’t have put it like that himself.

When Officer Kalakaua arrived, initially feisty and outraged to have been allowed more vacation time than the rest, she actually kissed him. Which was probably more pleasurable than it ought to have been.

“Oh my God, Max,” she said. “I just really don’t know what we’d do without you.”

She went straight upstairs to see the Commander and came down again looking a little sick. After that she told her cousin to go on back to bed and began cleaning the house. Captain Grover was busy making soup in the kitchen.

“Figured we’ll be sick of shrimp soon enough,” he said in grumpy explanation.

Max understood by this that Kamekona was probably already on his way. The phone hadn’t stopped ringing over the last hour. Charlie Fong. The Commander’s sister. His aunt. The latter two had been given a sanitized bulletin and reassured that everything was under control. Neither one of them believed it but neither one of them was in a position to be here right now. 

“We’ll call,” Chin assured them while Danny made ‘softly’ signals in the background. “Steve’s in the best possible hands and we’ll call.”

Charlie Fong had yet again been, as Officer Kalakaua declared, a rockstar. He went to the lab to process the Commander’s blood and sputum samples personally, even though he wasn’t due to be working. 

Kamokona and Flippa, of course, saw it as their job to keep everyone fed and once they’d arrived and Detective Williams was yelling loudly at them to be quiet because there was a very sick patient up the damn stairs it seemed like a good opportunity for Max to leave for a while, load up with more supplies. The _ohana_ was in full swing. 

He made sure, before he did, that they knew to call him instantly should anything change. He feared there was always going to be a point at which the risk of an overcrowded, overstretched King’s would have to be taken. And even Tripler. Although Max now knew the Commander’s team would absolutely go to the wire to avoid that. 

First, though, he had Detective Williams to deal with.

“So,” the very perplexing man said, completely ragged after the latest effluvium episode. He counted out the treatments on his fingers. “Oxygen if he gets bad. Tap the chest every couple hours. Ice packs for the fever. Get plenty of fluids into him.”

“That is correct. The next twenty-four hours will be crucial. It is vital that you are calm and patient with him. In his current confused condition he needs reassurance, and you all need to stay on your guard.” Max dropped his professional tone. “I’m sure your presence here will be beneficial.”

“My presence? As opposed to my back thumping and bucket holding skills?”

“Yes. I told Lieutenant Kelly that the Commander needed his team. But, I happen to believe, you most of all, Detective Williams. There is much evidence that finding a life partner is one of the most beneficial things for human health.”

“Well that’s... excuse me? Are you and Chin in this together?” 

There was a very bullish Jersey chin jut. 

“Not at all,” Max said. “Just another observation.”

A frustrated inability to carry on being bullish seemed to overwhelm the Detective. “Ah, whatever whatever, Bergman," he said, gaze swinging again to the bed. "You got the girl so I guess you know what you’re talking about.” 

He made a snapping noise with his tongue against his teeth.

Commander McGarrett, Max had to admit, looked truly terrible. His body was tense and his hands were restless, picking at the sheet. He was muttering half-sentences in a rough monotone. There were scarlet spots on his cheeks, and his red-rimmed, glassy eyes were half open, framed by spikes of black. Quite terrifying, really. 

“Don’t, of course, thump too hard,” Max said. He didn’t actually think it would be a problem.

For a man he considered deeply cynical and misanthropic, Commander McGarrett’s partner had a curiously passionate and tender nature. It was written through him at the moment, from the way he was standing, to the expression on his face as he looked at the Commander, to the way he swallowed as if he had a lump in his throat. 

“What you do to me, babe,” he said.

“It will be fine,” Max had assured him quickly, not even talking about the sick nursing. “You and Commander McGarrett, despite all evidence to the contrary, are going to be very good for each other.”

Detective Williams had given him a look. Then he’d gone to sit on the bed, hip lodged into the patient’s bare, sweat-slicked shoulder. He’d puffed out an unhappy breath, laid a hand very gently against the side of the Commander’s face where it was turned away from him.

“Maybe we are,” he’d said in a soothing voice. “Easy now. Maybe we are.”


	11. An Invalid Point

Danny finally hit on a new and compelling reason to appreciate being in Hawaii.

It had not been going well in that regard of late. There’d been the chronic missing of almost everything about Jersey, of course, kicked off by losing Mattie, and made so much worse by the clusterfuck of other events. Then while on shift as volunteer frontline field hospital staff with Lou Grover he’d had a belated, off-topic tirade about how sand and Christmas just didn’t go together. And then a major rant about the ‘flu epidemic and how it had to be something to do with the ridiculous climate. 

But then, just in the last day, he’d discovered this new thing about being here that he really liked a lot.

This discovery was made only once they’d finally dragged Steve back from the brink. Once he was out of bed (and actually allowed to be), which had felt like a lifetime coming but was really just under a week from the moment Danny had hurled himself through passport control at Charles de Gaulle airport in a frenzy of desperation to get back home. 

It had been a rough six days getting Steve to the out of bed stage. A really bad time which had made Danny realize everything about everything.

He was pretty sure he never wanted to hear the word ‘sputum’ coming from Max Bergman’s lips again, that was for sure. Also, the sound of gravel rattling in Steve’s lungs was getting more than old. On the almost positive side, however, the pneumonia part of the fuck-up had turned out to be a harsh and scary storm that blew itself out violently but fast. Not unlike its host in some ways.

And the really good thing? The Hawaii thing. Was that the chair Steve could now sit in (and the blanket he wouldn’t under any circumstances allow anywhere near him) were situated out in the fresh air. They were facing the most beautiful view - when it wasn’t raining. Danny didn’t quite see why, but the briny smell of the ocean up close seemed more of a tonic to Steve than most other things on offer.

So there was that.

Thanks to Kono the house was in pretty good order now. Not quite as ship-shape as the lunatic sailor liked to come home to, but most of the signs he’d spent seventy two scary hours on his own and out of his head had been cleaned up. 

“Oh God, these closets though,” Kono said, poking at the splintered, fist-sized hole in the door of one. “I mean, he must have really wanted them gone.”

“Don’t,” Danny said. “I really just... don’t.”

Kono put her arms round him, which she’d been doing a lot lately. “Hey,” she said. 

After the drugs had begun to work, the worst of the fever had finally washed out like the tide. Glad as he was to see the back of it, Danny wasn’t happy about the flotsam left behind. Never mind the physical effects of pneumonia, something messy and damaging had been released, and it was still weighing Steve down. The mess was invisible, hard to describe, but it was undeniably with him now instead of being hidden. 

“No, I don’t... really, I think I’m good,” Steve said, frowning, and he’d make as if that was enough. There was a hoarse flatness to his voice that Danny didn’t really recognize and a detachment in his general being Danny truly hated because it scared him. However, taking one step at a time was going to be the only way to deal with all this. The scrambled brain and the possible relationship both. 

Steve had been in a really bad way for at least three of the days, which Danny was finding hard to get past. They’d been on the verge of a collective decision to call EMS and get him subdued and taken to the ER at King’s when he’d turned the corner. As if he just had to give them the full doomsday crisis before giving them a break. Yeah, so he’d finally stopped the gut-churning repetition of ‘she’s not your mother’ and ‘what’d he ever do to you?’, stopped not knowing who they were, stopped not knowing _where_ they were, stopped resisting every damn thing with a strength he oughtn’t to have had. He hadn’t managed to connect with anyone’s face again, but not for want of trying. And how he hadn’t fallen down the stairs and taken one of them with him Danny would never know.

When he’d stopped wanting to get up and find all the missing people, and was into the sleeping like the dead phase, the rest of them had sat down and talked about Wo Fat. In McGarrett’s newly-tidied living room, which seemed only right.

“I think this is an excellent idea,” Max had said. “I will make us some tea.”

So yes. They’d done that. Pooled their knowledge, admitted what Wo Fat had done to them. Spoke about Jenna, the awful truth she was still lost to her family in north Korea, and Danny’s pessimistic prediction that one day - when they were least expecting it probably - Steve was bound to try and bring her home. They’d even come up with a recovery plan of sorts – which seemed to principally involve escalating romantic dates, an end to secrecy, and a wholesale change to Danny’s life. Not to mention Grace’s.

“My daughter will actually be more than fine with it,” he’d found himself saying, wondering why he couldn’t keep the tremor out of his voice. 

“He’s getting better, bro,” Chin had said, hand on his arm.

Danny was pretty sure the famous bounce-back was going to be slower this time. Steve wasn’t himself. He just... wasn’t. Not even physically. For sure even now, sitting down by the water in his invalid chair, he was still a little warm, still fighting the bugs. However, at least the pained glitter in his eyes was gone and Danny had begun to remember his skin was really rather pretty, rather than the carrier of a terrifying, griddle-pan heat that wouldn’t burn away. 

Only when convinced the recovery was looking permanent had Danny allowed himself to crash five or six hours straight down on the couch. The couch which was already starting to feel like absolutely the wrong place for him to be. Then he’d snatched another doze in the easy chair upstairs, feet propped on the bed, while watching over Steve sleeping, watching him be still. Finally, Danny had kicked off his shoes, and lain down on the bed right by his side. Just to be that close, to verify the more natural color to his face and the quiet hand resting on his very attractive stomach. Steve had murmured, chesty, flailed the hand to tug him closer. The rightness made Danny’s eyes brim and his heart turn over with a heavy thump. 

The house was quiet now, almost as if it was theirs. Everyone had gone to get some rest or check in with Jerry and Grover who were on their own with the smart table giving a great impression that Five-O was operational again.

Danny made tea, wondered if the crazy special forces knob of butter in it was taking his caregiving duties too seriously.

“Hey,” Steve croaked at him when he came padding down to the lanai with the mug. There was still a bunch of crud in his airways. And even if there hadn’t been, he still wasn’t saying much anyway.

Danny laid down the tea, picked up the blanket from where it was pooled on the ground. He breathed in the salt air.

“I saw you down at the shore,” he said. “Paddling is against the rules.” He shook the blanket out with a snap and Steve coughed.

Danny folded the unloved item and laid it over the back of the other chair. He wasn’t quite ready to sit down and be companionable yet. The more he went over everything in his mind, the more keyed up he felt. Despite promises to Chin to open an ‘OK, McGarrett, it’s time we nailed this thing down’ conversation, he still hadn’t said a word. And Steve could tell he had something on his mind and seemed either worried or irritated, Danny found it hard to tell right now.

“So,” he said.

Apparently only too aware a head of steam was building, Steve gestured at him to carry on. If he must.

“Couple things.” Danny rubbed his hands together. “First, you weren’t feeling so good the day Denning came, were you?”

Steve frowned at the accusation, and the leap back in time. The potential for a lecture he couldn’t interrupt.

“I mean,” Danny carried on. “Before any of us even left the island you weren’t feeling so good. And yet you didn’t say anything. Not even to me. Especially not even to me, you putz. I mean, what’s the matter with you? You think you don’t deserve to be taken care of? You gave us a vacation and then let us all just go off and leave you without saying anything. You were-” His voice caught, almost frantic, “-you were here alone and sick and I’m telling you, Steve, that’s never happening again, you understand me?”

“OK,” Steve wheezed, shuffling restlessly in the chair. “I get it.”

“No, babe, you don’t get it. You don’t nearly get it. That’s the problem. There is no way I would have gone to Paris if I’d known. If you’d just said one word to stop me. You can argue – and you’d have a good case – that I never should have gone anyhow. But the point is, if it had been the other way around can you imagine the hard time you’d have given me?”

Danny swung to the ocean. He waved his arms at it. 

Steve coughed again. “Danny,” he said, almost amused. “Was there something?”

Danny turned back. “I think you know.”

Steve’s brow furrowed and he pressed his hands on the arms of the chair. Despite the exhaustion the illness had left, he had an almost pathological instinct to try and be active. It was driving Danny a little crazy. Sure enough, moved by something, Steve struggled to his feet.

Which pressed all the buttons and sent Danny straight over to grab at him.

“Are you serious? Where do you think you’re going now, you utter goofball?”

They staggered a little on the sand. Steve slumped against him, trusting his weight would be taken, nearly tipped Danny over. Then he went all loose-limbed, breathing into Danny’s hair long and slow as if it was life-giving. 

Danny had two fistfuls of shirt, hanging on. They were not exactly fitting together like some perfect couple that was meant to be. 

“Hey, you go down out here, McGarrett, and I’m leaving your stringy ass for the giant crabs.”

“There are no giant crabs,” puffed against his ear.

“Well I’ll bet there’s something. Something that’ll crawl out of the ocean and pick over your bones.”

“No, listen.”

“I’m listening. I’m holding you up and listening.”

“Nearly killed me, but it was good you went. I’m glad you saw your cousin. And the Eiffel Tower. “

OK, so back to Paris.

“I didn’t get to those Catacombs of yours though. Because some bozo got sick and began destroying furniture.”

Steve leaned against him, going still, all floppy arms. “OK, so Paris, Danno.”

“Jeez, enough with the name. I mean, I guess your brain is more screwed up than usual, so I could forgive once or twice. No more than that though, you understand? You can’t call delirium on me any more.”

“Paris, Danny,” Steve said, “You and me.”

Always surprising, this man.

Paris represented something to Steve Danny hadn’t quite realized until this moment. He adjusted his stance again, his own heart thumping in his ears. It was almost too much, too big, what was happening, and he couldn’t help playing for time. 

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s time we got serious,” Steve said. There was a fine hint of the Commander in there that actually made Danny’s stomach flutter. Steve drew in a breath and it turned into a hacking cough.

Danny held him through it, jaw tense, teeth jangling from the vibration. “Oh sure,” he said as it petered out, “Serious. When you’ve gotten over being a colossal nightmare. When you’ve had your head examined.”

“Fine,” Steve said, arms tightening into an embrace. His body was solid, despite a noticeable drop in weight, finding its axis easily. He was warm, strong, smelled of coffee and the stuff Kono had washed the towels in. Needy and peculiar right now, too. But Danny realized he could handle that. That he wanted to. More than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.

“So you want serious, huh?”

“Yeah.” Steve’s voice was back to the chesty rattle. “Don’t you?”

Danny half wondered whether Chin had actually managed to get in a pre-emptive strike. But then he decided that perhaps this was something that had been somewhere in Steve’s unquiet mind for some time. As it had been in his. Maybe the fever had released some good things too.

“You know,” he began, his instinct for caution still dominant. But then the feel of Steve wrapped around him, the steady deep thump of that heart against his chest, shredded his caution into tiny pieces.

Steve’s arms tightened again but Danny resisted one more time. He needed to stick to some of his guns. The others deserved no less. “I mean it, about the head. There are issues, Steven. Things have happened and you’re not dealing. You have to deal or we’re not going anyplace good with this.”

“I said fine.” There was a hint of characteristic, dangerous impatience. Then a sigh, a half-surrender. “I’ll go see someone, whatever it is you want. But, Danny.” 

“Steve.”

“You and me. Not just some weekends. Not just for Christmas.”

Danny snorted a laugh. He couldn’t help it, even though he was suddenly terrified. “Man that fever really did a number on you didn’t it? I mean, I’m prepared to consider it, obviously, but in what way would us getting serious not be incredibly stupid and risky?”

“So Paris?”

“I think you’re ignoring my point, babe.”

Danny slipped hands under Steve’s shirt. Slid down his back to his hips. To those beguiling tattoos that really, really had no business belonging to anyone but him.

Steve made a sound that was probably supposed to be a hum but came out more like a scrape. He was weaving slightly and his lips pressed against Danny’s temple, almost as if he was drunk. 

“So?” he murmured again.

Always, always stubborn, this man.

Danny pulled back to look at him. He still held him very tight. 

“Told you before, babe. I got you, swear to God I got you. And yes. Totally. Paris. Bali. Venice. Timbuktu. The end of the road. Wherever the hell you want.”

As declarations of undying love went, it probably left a lot to be desired but it was the best he could do for a first time. 

It wouldn’t be the last time though, he knew that much now.

“Danny, Danny, Danny,” Steve croaked, inhibitions apparently scattered to the four winds. One side of his mouth turned up, which seemed to be the best he could do in the smile department at the moment.

Which, OK.

And that the big control freak had apparently just gone and snatched the initiative right out of Danny’s hands shouldn’t really be such a shocker.

“All right, all right,” Danny said, not resisting anymore. They could unpack the control thing later. And all the rest. His heart felt ridiculously light. “You may do the romantic kissing now.”


	12. Sitrep

Early in February Chin parked under his favorite tree outside the Iolani and took a few moments before getting out of the car. His head was still spinning.

He’d been reversing down the driveway at home twenty minutes ago, when he’d gotten a call from Danny.

_“Well anyway, Steve asked me to move in,”_ Danny had said straight off without a good morning, and Chin had nearly plowed into the fence.

His assumption had been that they’d do the whole official dating thing for a while. While everyone adjusted. 

Steve was still on sick leave, although not for much longer now his lungs were officially clear and he was managing alone. Concentration still shot, mind, according to Danny, and bad nights becoming more frequent by Steve’s own admission. 

Well, yes. Who ever thought this was going to be easy. Or the way anyone else did things.

Once they’d negotiated the first hurdle, of actually facing the fact they were an item, Danny said they’d obviously be taking things real slow, handling the bereavement and post-traumatic fuck-ups first, before they got into anything more serious. Obviously. Because they were experienced, sensible grown-up people with responsibilities.

Chin guessed he shouldn’t be surprised it wasn’t quite working out like that. Because McGarrett just had to be first through the door, didn’t he, without knowing what was on the other side. Although of course he’d say he never went through a door without being confident he could deal with whatever he’d find. 

And for a cautious guy who rarely took anything on trust, turned out a Danny crazy in love was all about the impulsive too.

_“So, you’re not saying anything.”_

Chin jammed the gearbox to neutral, released the footbrake he’d been stamping on. 

“OK. He asked you to-?”

_“Yes. That was his pitch. Moving in right away. Full boyfriend deal, with an option to upgrade.”_

Danny was brisk, but actually he couldn’t quite hide that he was full of emotion.

“Uh huh?” Chin had replied, still processing. 

_“I said yes. So, there. That’s the news for today. You can tell the others. Jerry just came round with breakfast so he knows already and is probably calling Max even as we speak.”_

“OK,” Chin had said. Because, really, what else?

_“I mean, it’s what you all wanted, isn’t it?”_

“Danny, believe me, we just want some peace and stability in the workplace.”

_“Well there you are then.”_

“And like I said. For you two to stop fighting it.”

_“I think you could say that we have done that. Not each other, but it. And thank you for being honest with me. For being the one to kick my ass over this. Max did, too, in his own way, but you. You were the one.”_

Chin swallowed. It was now, this very moment, that he had to finally let go something a part of him had held tight to since high school. 

But that was real love, too, he supposed. 

“Grace?” he said, deciding he’d need to get his head around that part of the new situation later.

_“My daughter is very, very cool with it. More than actually. And, you know, I wouldn’t have said yes if she wasn’t.”_

“That I do know, brother. And your girl is very smart.”

_“She really is. And, yes. That’s it. Tell everyone. And then tell them not to make a great big fuss about it. I’ll be in later.”_

Chin had laughed out loud at him, feeling a release of tension. That thing Danny did. No great big fuss. Right. 

He grinned to himself now when he thought about it.

So, this. This was definitely news he didn’t mind taking up into HQ with him.

It was a cloudy morning, with hints of coming sunshine, the temperature seasonal. 

He took the stairs as he usually did unless recovering from some bullet wound or injury occasioned by the craziness of their lives. Apart from Danny his phone had been quiet and he hoped this meant there was nothing brewing.

Upstairs Lou was sucking coffee from a takeout cup. Kono was in her office talking on her phone but her face didn’t suggest it was work. More like family given the eye roll she gave him as he passed on his way in.

“Hey,” Chin said and he couldn’t help grinning.

“’sgoing on?” Lou asked, suspicious.

Kono, pocketing her phone, strode out and up to the table, gossip antennae quivering.

“Cuz?” 

“I have some news. It’s maybe sit down or hang on news.”

“You’re smiling, brah, this is fun news.”

“Well,” Chin said. “Fun is one way of looking at it.”

“Would you just?” Lou grumped. And then, “Ohhhhh,” when Chin told them. He let his lolling mouth slowly close as he watched Kono high five her cousin and then jump-hug him as if they’d just won the New York Lotto.

“Yeah, so Danny and McGarrett have had a thing for a while.” Chin was apologetic when Kono released him, because yeah, they had been keeping it quiet. “They just hadn’t gotten around to admitting it was serious. To themselves even, never mind us.”

“We always knew though, right?” Kono said, a little smug. 

“Well sure, BFFs and all that,” Grover said, still trying it on for size. “But I thought Danny punched McGarrett in the teeth just after they met? I mean, even for those two that wouldn’t seem normal for a love affair.”

“Oh no,” Chin said, “I’d say a punch in the teeth would be entirely normal.”

“Right.” Grover considered that and it seemed to make sense. “So here you are coming in and telling me this is my new work environment.”

“Kind of a shock, right?”

“Well it’s not as if we do a regular nine to five, any of my co-workers are predictable, or I have a boss who could in any way be described as normal.”

“You’re embracing it, Lou, I can tell.”

“Sheesh. Both my wife and daughter will tell me there’s none so blind as those fools that can’t see what’s in front of their noses. It probably won’t be news to them, that’s all I can say.”

“And you’re really OK with it?”

“What do you take me for? I’m OK with every part of it except the increased hell that McGarrett’s going to put Danny through every time he straps on his tac. And I ain’t holding out for the arguments going away. In fact, given my experience of living with a significant other, they’re probably only going to get worse.”

“It’s a work in progress, Lou,” Chin said. 

And they all caught themselves smiling at each other across the smart table.

Because, really, that wasn’t even just Steve and Danny. 

That was actually the whole story.

 

-ends-


End file.
